


I Would Become A Constellation (To Be Next To You)

by astrangerenters



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Developing Relationship, Getting Together, M/M, Romance, Sexual Content, Slice of Life, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:10:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7368469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangerenters/pseuds/astrangerenters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shuttle mechanic Ninomiya Kazunari has just been assigned to a new ship. It’s all going well until the Captain announces a special project that will test everyone aboard in unexpected ways. And it doesn’t help that Nino’s partner for this project is someone he can’t stand…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A sci-fi slice of life romance!! All of the space/sci-fi jargon and terminology are borrowed from/inspired by Battlestar Galactica, but you don’t need to know that series AT ALL to read this. Title from [this translation](http://yarukizero.livejournal.com/33466.html) of Hitomi no Naka no Galaxy.

He was still getting used to the carpet.

It still smelled new, an artificially fresh scent that he knew couldn’t possibly last forever. Everyone from the captain down to the lowliest crewman wore the same fleet-issued black boots. Though Nino doubted the captain would ever dirty the new carpets, the men and women doing the real work around here were going to tromp oil and grease from the flight deck into it in no time.

Ninomiya Kazunari considered himself one of those people.

Every ship of the line he’d been aboard in the last fifteen years had been built for efficiency, not comfort. His most recent posting on the Hakutaka was not what you’d call cozy. It was a sleek vessel built for combat and maneuverability, just like all of the exploratory ships that had ventured out into deep space. 

The Hakutaka had been one of a dozen JSA ships that patrolled the edges of the system, always in search of a new planet or planetoid where a new colony could be established or resources could be mined. It was rare that the Hakutaka had to even open fire now that most of the pirate fleets had been neutralized, but she was always ready to keep the peace or make sure vessels from other Earth nations didn’t try to steal from or sneak around in JSA territory.

But things had changed. Expansion was no longer the highest priority. The Japanese population, both the millions still on Earth and the millions scattered across Japan Space Authority planets and space stations, had reached a comfortable number. It wasn’t growing exponentially each year like the populations of their Nigerian neighbors just one star system over. Japan was done growing for a while, and the need for so many exploratory ships had dropped.

Nino hadn’t exactly expected the Hakutaka to be decommissioned though. It hadn’t even been the oldest of her class, but then again, they’d had one of the larger crews, the second to highest number of Kitsune fighters aboard. The Hakutaka had apparently been quite the money suck for the JSA, so the decision had been made to decommission her, to reassign the crew to other vessels or to let them leave the fleet entirely for civilian opportunities.

Nino’s first assignment had been on a fuel freighter straight out of high school, save for a few months of basic training at JSA Mechanic School at Japan’s Mars colony. As one of the most senior enlisted crew on the Hakutaka’s flight deck, he’d been given his pick of assignments. He hadn’t even considered going back to civilian life. JSA paid too well, even if you weren’t an officer.

So now he’d found himself here, dirtying up the carpet aboard the JSA’s newest “brilliant idea.” For decades, the JSA had focused more on growth and expansion, mapping the star system that had been authorized centuries ago solely for Japanese exploration and settlement. Once the JSA had founded a new colony or a space station, it had been left to private contractors to get civilians moved throughout the system to populate those places. 

Nino’s first trip to Mars for basic training had been aboard a clunky old ship run by a sleazy corporation called the Zip to Mars! Company. The exclamation mark should have been the first red flag. He’d been shoved in a room with twenty other people and all their belongings. Zip to Mars! wasn’t big on transporting cargo and people separately, as Nino had discovered when a woman’s great heap of suitcases fell on him when he was asleep one night, scaring him half to death.

And that had just been the Earth to Mars trip. JSA had colonies scattered throughout their assigned star system, several light years from Earth. Private contractors, even though they were known price gougers, rarely had the funds to install a Faster-than-Light drive to jump their ships those extraordinary distances. And the ones that did have FTL drives couldn’t jump very far. A person leaving Earth for a distant colony would have to make several stops along the way, and with prices rising, fewer people found leaving Earth to be the best solution.

So here Nino was, just finishing up his first month aboard the “brilliant idea.” His new posting was here on JSA-409, the Suzaku. Like the Hakutaka, the Suzaku had been an exploratory ship, but she was just about finished with her retrofit. Instead of being decommissioned, the JSA had turned the Suzaku into a transport ship. With her state-of-the-art FTL drive and massive size, the Suzaku would be able to safely transport civilians from Earth to even the furthest JSA colony within a few weeks rather than a year and with cost savings to those traveling.

The problem for people like Nino, used to the spartan accommodations of a battleship, was going to be all those damn _people_.

He’d known it when he’d agreed to be posted here, known that in addition to officers and crew that there’d be families aboard, but he hadn’t expected there to be so much…intermingling.

Nino’s crew quarters were on deck 8, port, but there were newly outfitted family quarters on deck 8, starboard. There were new family-friendly facilities for passengers like swimming pools, cafeterias and restaurants, a movie theater, even a park that had been created out of what had been the Suzaku’s training area for war games. He could already envision little kids zipping through the corridors, getting in the way. There’d be kids sneaking around in off limits areas, kids messing around with the computer panels on the wall. Nino just knew these things would happen. He’d been a kid before.

The Suzaku was currently en route to Earth from the New Miyagi Shipyards, a journey of about two weeks at standard sublight speed. Then they’d be leaving Earth with their first batch of civilians, with stops at Japan’s Mars colony, a couple stations in the asteroid belt, and then a jump out to the Kuiper Belt to one of Japan’s oldest colonies on the dwarf planet Haumea, New Hokkaido. After this “test run” that was mostly confined to the solar system, they’d head back to Earth and start going further afield. 

He felt the squishy new carpet under his boots as he headed for the lift to take him down to his shift on the flight deck. For now the decks of the Suzaku were still full of the usual quiet. Officers and crew moving to and fro, coming off duty or heading for their own shifts. The ever-present hum of airflow and the gentle throb from the engineering decks. No screaming, no crying. And no stinky diapers. 

Things were about to change.

—

But at least he had the Noris.

Emerging from the lift on deck 20, Nino pulled his yellow jumpsuit up from where he’d left it undone to the waist, jamming his arms into the sleeves and zipping it up properly to report for his shift. He pressed his palm against the computer panel, the computer greeting him in its soothing voice.

“Good morning, Petty Officer First Class, Crewman Specialist Ninomiya Kazunari.”

“Just call me Nino already,” he chided the computer, knowing it was a useless exercise.

The doors whooshed open, granting Nino the beautiful view. The flight deck was massive, five decks high and running the entire length of the ship. Toward the bow end of the flight deck were the two dozen Kit launch tubes, where in the past the Suzaku’s Kitsune fighter vessels would be propelled out into space to meet a threat or head out for standard patrols. With the retrofit and its more “peaceful” mission, the Suzaku only had a bare bones complement of Kits, six that worked in a three-shift rotation, one Kit flying alongside the Suzaku on either side at all times unless they were preparing for an FTL jump. Most of the tubes sat empty now.

The aft end of the flight deck was home to the Noris. The Norimono shuttles were really Nino’s second home. On exploratory missions, the Noris would serve as scouts or would transport crew planetside. Though the Suzaku had lost so many Kits, the number of Noris had doubled with its new mission. There were now fifty Norimono shuttles, some designed to carry civilian passengers aboard and the rest outfitted for their luggage and whatever belongings they were taking to their final destinations.

On the Hakutaka Nino had started out as a Nori mechanic. He liked them, even when others liked to disparage them as being nothing but “clunky school buses.” Nino always cheered for the underdog. They were reliable, their problems easy to diagnose. Nino felt that he was fluent in Norimono, that he could understand exactly what was wrong with them. After more than a decade of practice, Nino could perform a full inspection of a Nori, every single safety checkpoint, in about 20 minutes.

Even though he could inspect a Kitsune with his eyes closed, their language never spoke to him. It probably had more to do with their pilots than anything. Kit pilots were some of the most arrogant people in the entire JSA fleet. They were elites and they’d undergone rigorous training to pilot them. So they believed that they were the only ones who really knew how their precious fighter vessels worked. Tell a Kit pilot that he’s leaking coolant and be ready for war.

Nori pilots trusted the flight deck crew to keep their shuttles in top condition. Kit pilots were overly possessive since their stupid names were etched onto their personal vessel, their name and rank and their dumb ass callsigns. And they sure as hell didn’t respect the deck crew, who’d only been to Mechanic School, not Flight School. Nino would start a Kit inspection and spend half the time arguing with its pilot. It was not an efficient way to work, but bridge officers tended to not like it when a mere Crewman Specialist told a Kit pilot to “get the fuck off my flight deck or I’ll take your head off with my wrench.”

So Nino usually just held his tongue these days, doing as much of his inspection as he could when the pilots were off duty. 

Taking the metal steps down to the flight deck itself, he felt at ease surrounded by all the other yellow jumpsuits. He couldn’t see any of the sleek black flight suits anywhere, the ones denoting a Kitsune pilot. He strolled over to the assignment board where his new senior officer, Crew Chief Okada, had laid out the day’s work.

Chief Okada’s handwriting left something to be desired, but he was happy to find the names “Ninomiya” and “Ohno” side by side again, assigned to a tune-up of Nori 17 and regular inspections of Noris 28-36. Nino was also glad to see Yamada was on Kit duty today, smirking when he saw it. Yamada was fresh out of Mechanic School, and much as Nino liked the kid, it was a rite of passage for all of them to work on the Kits and get through it without threatening to punt a pilot out the airlock.

He headed for the Deck Crew locker room, heading for his small locker and pressing his palm to the panel. It slid open with a gentle whoosh, and he tugged out his tool belt, settling it around his hips. Closing up his locker, he was unsurprised to find his new partner by the wall of lockers on the other side, snoring.

Until recently, Ohno Satoshi had been a third-shift mechanic, serving on the Suzaku for over ten years. He was still adjusting to his new call time. Even though they’d known each other barely a month, Chief Okada had already figured out that they made for a good team. On the Hakutaka, crew rotations were a common occurrence. Nino had worked with different people every day on the flight deck, and it made things a bit challenging. One day he’d be on a long-term assignment repairing a Kit, the next he’d be pulled off to help some juniors on the fueling crew fix broken hoses and nozzles. It kept him on his toes, but he hadn’t much liked the uncertainty, the problems with communication, having to rely only on the notes of the crewperson who’d been on that job the day before.

Already Nino found Okada’s leadership to be the polar opposite. While he still rotated assignments, he tended to put the same people together for longer stretches of time, figuring out who worked best with someone else rather than just jumbling things up day after day. Ohno said it was mostly because Okada “hated coming up with assignments anyhow,” but Nino found consistency to be the sign of a good mechanic.

Ohno was a Crewman Specialist, similar in rank to Nino. He was a few years older and with his years of experience he could have been a Crew Chief anywhere in the fleet. He’d even joined JSA before Chief Okada had, but he wasn’t much for being in charge, preferring to just do his job and stay under the radar. That lack of ego meshed well with Nino’s. They already had to be patient with the Kit pilots and with the pending influx of civilians. Having a jackass inspecting Noris with you all day would be tiresome.

Nino nudged Ohno’s boot with his own. “Oi, wake up.”

Ohno mumbled under his breath, putting a hand through his messy black hair. He was a little smaller than Nino was, with the personality of a grumpy uncle and the face of a bored child. And yet Ohno Satoshi knew his Noris and his Kits. Sleepy in the locker room, Ohno was quick thinking on the flight deck, his hands deft with repairs and his comments and orders succinct but clear. He tolerated Nino’s tendency for sarcasm, even laughed at his jokes here and there. And if Nino’s diagnosis was wrong, Ohno called him on it without acting superior.

Ohno looked up at him. “28 through 36 first, then?”

“Sounds good.”

Nino held out a hand, pulling Ohno to his feet. They left the locker room behind, Nino waving to a few other arrivals for first shift. The Nori shuttles lined the massive flight deck, half in their berths along the port side and the other half in berths along the starboard side. Shuttles departing the ship headed right up the middle, flying out the double set of airlock doors at the stern.

The Nori pilots had been in and out the last several days on short test runs, preparing for their eventual flights planetside when they arrived on Earth. The flight deck was bustling like always in preparation, mechanic teams running safety checks, performing inspections, keeping the shuttles fueled up. Chief Okada was far down at the end of the line, a small figure off in the distance standing beside Crewman Specialist Kojima, the woman who was responsible for operating the stern airlock doors during first shift. 

Berths 1-25 were along the port side of the ship, 26-50 along the starboard side. Nino stepped over a fuel hose being tugged by some junior crewmen as he and Ohno approached Berth 28. Though they’d only been paired a few weeks, he and Ohno divided up the work evenly without having to really discuss it. For the first Norimono, Nino performed the physical checks, every single normal point of their inspection, while Ohno jotted things down on their crew tablet. Then they’d switch off, Ohno doing physical checks and going over every inch of space inside the next Norimono with efficiency while Nino kept a log of their work.

Nino let the flight deck noise become nothing more than a buzz in the background. Even the noisy airlock alarm, a sign that a Nori was in flight and heading out the first set of airlock doors and awaiting departure clearance out the second and final set of doors, didn’t bother him. He checked the computer systems, the wiring, the life support, all of his usual checks inside while Ohno backed him up with a visual inspection. Then he exited the shuttle, performing external checks, looking for weaknesses in the hull, missing components, any leaks.

Soon enough it was time for lunch, and he and Ohno had gotten through their first five inspections. Washing his hands and unzipping his jumpsuit, Nino settled it around his waist again to enjoy the cool flight deck air against his bare arms. He was clad as usual under his jumpsuit in his standard issue gray tank top, happy for a break from the heavier jumpsuit. He followed Ohno to the flight deck cafeteria where poor Crewman Yamada was unable to touch his food since he was getting an earful from a Kit pilot.

“You smeared grease all over my instruments, Yamada!” the Kit pilot was hollering, standing there in his black flight jacket and slacks, even though Nino knew quite well that he wasn’t flying patrol until second shift started in a few hours. “They’re extremely delicate, and you should very well know that if I can’t read through your damn smudge it puts me at risk out there!”

“I…I was going to wipe it!” Yamada pleaded.

“Are you talking back to me? I should make you lick it clean with your tongue!” the pilot screeched.

Ohno elbowed Nino and snickered gently. “Okadacchi isn’t very nice, giving Yama-chan his first Kit inspection with him.”

“Him” being Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun, a Kitsune pilot with nearly ten years of flight experience and one of the best of the best. And he wanted to make sure you knew it, especially if you were a lowly mechanic with grease on your fingers. He’d served on the Hakutaka with Nino the last seven years, and Nino had a lot of respect for him. Matsumoto had seen a great deal of combat, was known throughout the fleet for his finesse in the cockpit. But he had a real stick up his ass, and he didn’t much appreciate it when Nino reminded him of it.

While Ohno headed for the food line, Nino walked up, trying not to laugh when he saw the tears of embarrassment in poor Yamada’s eyes. “Jun-kun,” he said pointedly, putting his hand on the pilot’s shoulder and offering a gentle squeeze.

Matsumoto was the textbook definition of hotshot pilot, the kind who would have been at home on a JSA recruitment poster. “Join us and you can be as awesome as this guy!” He was infuriatingly good looking, broad shouldered and solidly built from all the muscle training he had to do to stay qualified to fly. It took a toll on your body if you weren’t prepared. Even on the Hakutaka, a tightly-run ship, most people had cleared the way if Lieutenant Matsumoto was coming through. His piloting callsign was just as obnoxious as he was, the nameplate on his Kit saying “Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun - Mr. Perfect.”

It was a nickname he’d earned in Flight School, having achieved the highest scores in his class. The only person who saw through it all, at least on the Hakutaka, had been Nino. Nino who’d almost gotten himself a court-martial for a practical joke, swapping out Jun’s nameplate one day for one that said “Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun - Mr. Average.”

Jun wasn’t perfect. But he was a perfectionist, and even if it had always made Nino’s job more difficult, trying to tune up his Kitsune to his extraordinary standards, it had led to them becoming friends. Sort of. Jun preferred it if the flight deck crew was afraid of him, simply because he thought it would make them work just as hard as him. 

Nino had never found him all that scary. Jun was just big on ceremony - everyone called him Lieutenant or by his stupid callsign. Even off duty, he was usually Lieutenant or Matsumoto. Nino suspected only Jun’s girlfriend, his mother, and Nino himself called him by his given name.

Jun finally stopped yelling at Yamada, shoving Nino’s hand off of him. “Don’t you have some child safety seats to install?” Jun barked at him. Once a Kit pilot, always a Kit pilot. He disparaged the “lesser” Norimono shuttles any chance he got, including their retrofitting progress.

Nino smiled. Jun was just being Jun. The interruption helped Ohno to wave over Yamada to safety at his table, and the young crewman scampered off, nearly knocking his cup of milk off of his lunch tray as he fled. Nino pushed on Jun’s shoulders, shoving him onto the cafeteria bench. “What brings you to our humble flight deck today, Lieutenant?” Nino asked.

Since most people had steered clear once Jun started yelling, he was able to speak with Nino in a more relaxed fashion. He was still in a bad mood though. “I have a patrol coming up…”

“…in, like, four hours,” Nino teased, sitting across from Jun and helping himself to the leftovers from Yamada’s tray. “Even if Yama-chan is new to Kits, it’s not going to take him four hours to clear you to fly. And he’s got Yoshitaka working with him. She’s been checking Kits for five years.”

“He’s gonna move something. He’s gonna break something.”

Nino did everything in his power not to roll his eyes. Years back Jun had had the same worries about him, but before they’d left the Hakutaka, Jun had admitted he didn’t trust anyone with his precious Kit more than he trusted Nino. But then, Nino had always liked the Noris better, and he’d barely given Matsumoto’s Kitsune a second look since the reassignment.

But Nino could read Jun just about as well as he could read a Nori with a malfunctioning fuel line. Something else was wrong. Nino pushed Yamada’s tray a bit, letting Jun help himself to one of the onigiri Yamada had abandoned. Jun took it without so much as a thank you.

Since the reassignment, Jun had been a real mess. In transferring from the Hakutaka, as one of the most skilled pilots in the fleet and likely one of the best on the ship, he’d taken the Suzaku assignment because he’d expected to be promoted to Flight Commander, to coordinate patrols for himself and the other five Kit pilots, to be entirely responsible for the Suzaku’s first line of defense.

He’d been passed over in favor of someone younger, mostly because she’d already been on the Suzaku at the time. Now Flight Commander, Eikura Nana was Jun’s superior officer, even though he had hundreds of hours more flight experience. Then again, she’d definitely earned her callsign, Upstart, in flight school, where she’d graduated almost a full year early. She was an incredible pilot, and Jun had finally admitted to being impressed with her leadership and skills.

So if it wasn’t his lingering grudge over Upstart’s promotion, then what was up his ass today?

“You’re being more of a tool than usual today,” Nino said, catching the dark flash in Jun’s eyes in warning. “Don’t tell me, they downgraded you to Nori pilot?”

Jun rolled his eyes. “If any other enlisted crewman talked to me the way I let you…”

Nino leaned forward, grinning. “Jun-kun, I like Yama-chan and I don’t want you frightening him off into some dreadful job for a private contractor. Talk to me.”

“Only the senior officers know this right now,” Jun said, lowering his voice, “but apparently Captain Inohara’s going to call a ship-wide meeting in the next few days. Flight deck’s the only place where they can hold all of us, that’s why I know about it. Upstart told me in confidence.”

“A ship-wide meeting?” Nino repeated, a bit shocked.

The last ship-wide meeting Nino had attended had been aboard the Hakutaka when Captain Higashiyama had announced the ship’s decommissioning. And before that, it had only been for memorial services or major itinerary changes. Everyone attended these meetings, from the Captain all the way down to the crew members responsible for cleaning out quarters and the ship’s common areas.

“Upstart didn’t know,” Jun admitted. “She’s the Kit Flight Commander and she doesn’t even know what it’s about.”

“It’s serious then,” Nino decided. “Can’t be a declaration of war or it would have been on the Net.”

“And we’d have been flying faster for Earth or out to some colonial patrol if that was the case,” Jun said.

“Have you met him before? The captain?”

Jun nodded. As a ranking officer, Jun had probably met the man when he’d first reported for duty. Enlisted crew didn’t get those kind of invites. The captain, the people on the bridge of the ship, they had little to do with Nino’s day-to-day work. Even Chief Okada reported in to people in Engineering rather than a bridge officer. 

Inohara Yoshihiko was a younger captain, had seen combat here aboard the Suzaku against pirates from the Lithuanian and Latvian colonies a few systems over. He was well-respected in the JSA fleet. He wouldn’t call a ship-wide meeting for no reason.

“Just has me worried, that’s all,” Jun admitted. After all the efforts made to retrofit the Suzaku, had plans suddenly changed? What could he have to say that every member of the crew had to hear all together in one place? “Obviously you can’t tell anyone about this.”

“I won’t,” Nino promised, much as he loved to gossip. He didn’t want to get Jun in trouble, because then Jun would probably toss him out an airlock, friends or no. “Okay, now do your worst so everyone knows what a big tough guy you are.”

Jun got up from the table in a rage, Nino biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “And you, Ninomiya, as Yamada’s senpai, you ought to teach him something as simple as cleaning up his greasy hands before he smears up my entire instrument panel. You got it?”

“Yes, Lieutenant, loud and clear,” Nino replied, offering a half-assed salute before Jun went stomping off to uphold his nasty reputation.

When Jun was gone, Nino headed over to where Ohno and Yamada were sitting. Ohno shook his head. “What’s he always so angry about?”

Yamada inclined his head, halfway to hopping off the bench so he could kneel down before Nino. “If you said something to Lieutenant Matsumoto on my behalf, thank you so much. Thank you, Ninomiya-san, thank you!”

Nino tried not to think about the upcoming crew meeting, the secret he had to keep, and instead just patted Yama-chan on the head, hoping Jun would eventually lay off him. “Just do your best, alright?”

While Yamada thanked him over and over, Ohno grinned, sharing the rest of his lunch with Nino.

—

When he and Ohno got to Nori 36, Nino paused. The shuttle door at the rear of the craft was wide open. “Ohno-san, does the log say anything about the aft exit hatch being open?”

Ohno looked down at the tablet in his hand, shaking his head. “Third shift finished their visual inspection, and I have it here that the aft exit hatch and the emergency hatches were all closed.”

Nino looked around. There were always people in and out of the flight deck, both Nori pilots and deck crew, but records were records for a reason. He stared at the open hatch. “Has Lieutenant Kitagawa been down here?”

Of all his Nori pilots, Kitagawa was the least likely to leave a damn hatch open, and as expected, Ohno shook his head. “No, she hasn’t logged flight time on 36 since yesterday. She’s supposed to be here in an hour for a test.”

“Alrighty, let’s see who our culprit is,” Nino said, walking up the shuttle’s short metal ramp. It only opened up and unfolded when the rear hatch was open. Nori 36 had been refitted as a civilian shuttle, the individual flight chairs that had been used for crew had been replaced with four rows of seats capable of seating twenty passengers for a short trip between a planet or colony and the Suzaku. He headed up the aisle, seeing that the thinner interior door that separated the passengers from the cockpit had also been opened.

Nobody was inside, but Nino frowned upon seeing that the computer panels were all lit up. The shuttle was empty but someone had left the lights on. Even if the ship’s main engine was off, it was still wasting energy. 

“Nino!” came Ohno’s voice from outside, “someone just came out of 38!”

Nino turned around, running out of the shuttle. Ohno was still there, holding the crew tablet in confusion. In the next berth over, Nino finally noticed that Nori 37’s aft hatch was open as well. It wasn’t on their assignment list, but it was equally suspicious. 

“Go into 36,” Nino said, “jot down everything the way it is. We’ll perform our inspection after noting down all the irregularities.”

“You got it,” Ohno said, already typing up his comments.

Nino headed around the rear of the berths along the bulkhead wall, seeing that their mysterious guest had left open 36, 37, and 38 in the same fashion and had apparently just gone into Nori 39. If Nino wanted to pretend he was in an adventure story, he’d take one of his wrenches from his tool belt, hold it up to protect himself. A thief, a murderer, a stowaway! Ah, but nobody could get onto the flight deck without clearance. It just meant someone wasn’t in the mood for following proper protocols today.

He headed up 39’s ramp, bypassing the rows of seats to find that someone had just sat down in the pilot’s seat inside the cockpit. The person, male, was clearly in his own world - he was just about to plug an external memory chip into the control panel when Nino cleared his throat.

“And what do you think you’re doing?”

Since the guy hadn’t managed to turn on the interior shuttle lights yet, Nino had been under the assumption that it was just another member of the flight deck crew. He was shocked when the man in the pilot’s chair pressed a switch on the panel, flipping on the cockpit lights and turning around.

Nino gulped when the man stood up, looking at him with a rather stern expression. He was in the standard dark blue crew uniform, a double-breasted jacket with silver buttons going down the right side, tucked in to the matching belted slacks, and wearing the same standard issue black boots Nino himself wore. The insignia at his collar was similar to Jun’s, the same rank, but instead of the little wings pin Jun wore just above the breast pocket of his flight suit, this man had a silver star. 

This was a bridge officer.

Shit.

“What I’m doing,” the man said, his voice deep and serious, “is updating the star charts on these computers.”

Unlike Nino’s kind of sloppy mop of dark hair, this man, this Lieutenant rather, had his neatly trimmed and parted on the side, wispy black fringe covering his forehead. He was a little taller than Nino, his face round and his eyes tired. He’d be handsome if he didn’t look so angry right now.

Nino stood his ground. Bridge officer or no, this man was breaking protocols. Who would be updating a star chart on the Norimono shuttles? On the Hakutaka, the ship’s Chief Navigator usually just sent instructions along to the flight deck, had the crew install and update the charts. Of the Suzaku’s bridge crew, the Chief Navigator was…

“Lieutenant Sakurai,” the man introduced himself before Nino could remember. “I’m the Suzaku’s Navigator.”

“Crewman Specialist Ninomiya,” he said in reply, putting his hands on his hips. “When a shuttle door is opened, it has to be noted in the log. Any changes to the shuttles have to be noted in the log.”

“I always note it in the log upon completion.”

“Do you note it in _our_ log, Lieutenant? The flight deck log?” Nino asked, trying not to sound as annoyed as he felt. Officers were this way sometimes, noting things in their own personal crew logs or in the logs for their departments. It was up to the deck crew to figure out everything that had been done behind their backs, to keep their own records up to speed.

At this, Sakurai looked irritated. “I send the updates from the Navigation log to Chief Okada upon completion. What he does with them is his business.” The man shoved the memory chip into his pants pocket, stepping away from the console. “I update the star charts in every Norimono and every Kitsune myself when they come in. For consistency’s sake.”

“That’s very dutiful of you,” Nino said. “And how often is that?”

“Every six weeks,” Sakurai snitted. “Crewman Specialist, will you let me do my job, please?”

Nino bit the inside of his cheek. No wonder he didn’t know what was going on. And with Ohno having worked third shift until recently, he probably hadn’t known either. “I’m a transfer. From the Hakutaka. I started four weeks ago.”

“Welcome aboard,” Sakurai said, scratching his cheek and not giving off very welcoming body language anyhow. “And now that you know what I’m doing, you are dismissed. Return to your duties.” 

If Nino was smart, he’d do just that. He shouldn’t mouth off to a bridge officer no matter how lazy the asshole was about flight deck protocol. And no matter how much the guy seemed to like the sound of his own voice as he gave orders. Nino imagined that this guy and Jun would either get along tremendously or murder one another in five minutes trying to pull rank on each other.

Sakurai was just sitting back down in the pilot’s seat when Nino interrupted him again.

“If you don’t mind me asking off the record, sir, why did you start with Norimono number 36?”

Sakurai turned, glaring at him. “You’ve been dismissed. And you have to ask permission to speak with me off the record.”

“I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question, sir. Someone as obviously methodical as yourself, who personally updates every star chart on the Kits and Noris, would logically start in berth 1 and move up and down the line. I’ve been tasked with inspections for Norimonos 28 through 36 today and clearly you haven’t been in 28 through 35 or you’d have also needlessly left the hatch open and the lights on in those shuttles too…”

“Crewman Specialist.”

“Ninomiya, sir. It’s Ninomiya. I just thought it was an odd method of working, and since, like you, I like to keep good log records, I want to make sure I understood your reasoning…”

“Ninomiya.”

“…so that in six weeks when you come back and fuck around with my shuttles like this again, I’ll at least know about it and can make sure my records and the shuttles I’m responsible for are in order.”

Sakurai gaped at him.

Nino knew he’d crossed the line now, but he couldn’t help it. He inclined his head. “Sir.”

Sakurai sat back in the pilot’s seat, and from the reddened look to his face, he seemed to be holding back an outburst of what might be volcanic proportions. If only Jun was here to be impressed by it. Sakurai shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“You’re right.”

Nino blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re right,” Sakurai said, exhaling. He still seemed rather angry, but since he hadn’t yet stormed out of the cockpit to call a security team to have Nino thrown in the brig, Nino figured he wasn’t in as much trouble as he ought to be. “You’re right about it being strange for me to start at 36. You’re also right about me not properly logging my updates with the flight deck. It was laziness on my part, to notify Okada after the fact. He’s my friend, he never said it was a problem…”

“My apologies, sir. I’ve only been here a month. On my previous ship, such a thing was unacceptable.”

“You said you’re from the Hakutaka. Yeah, I’m not surprised.” Sakurai nodded a few times, as if gathering his thoughts. Nino watched him, stared at him in profile as he turned in the pilot’s seat, staring at the wall. “36 is Lieutenant Kitagawa’s shuttle. She used to be on the Navigation team with me. We worked together, she’s a good officer. When she switched over to Nori piloting, she asked for me to always install her star charts first so she could see what’s been updated. We’re a bit nerdy, those of us with stellar cartography as a hobby. It’s a habit I’ve stuck with, even if it’s a little silly.”

“Favoritism?”

“Friendship,” Sakurai shot back. “I can have them all updated in an afternoon, so updating hers first doesn’t really put her at too much of an advantage over her other pilots.”

“That’s cute, sir.” Nino smiled. “Off the record, of course, sir.”

Sakurai cleared his throat. “Not that I owed you any sort of explanation, but there it is. Now if you don’t leave this time, I will make a note of your insubordination in your personnel file.” Sakurai’s smile was a bit spooky this time, not at all as charming as he’d been while explaining his geeky friendship with the Nori pilot. “I’m very good about updating those sorts of records, Ninomiya.”

“Of course, sir. I’ll check in with Chief Okada to make sure that the flight deck logs reflect your efforts this afternoon.”

And before Sakurai could say anything else, Nino turned on his heel and left, realizing only now how hard he was breathing, how nervous he’d been. He had a big mouth, and sometimes he had trouble keeping it shut.

He found Ohno already halfway through the inspection on shuttle 36. Ohno’s eyes widened at the sight of him. “What the hell happened? You were gone so long! Who was it, a stowaway?”

Trust Ohno Satoshi to long for the same adventure on the flight deck that Nino had. “Worse,” Nino admitted. “A superior officer.”

Ohno clucked his tongue. “They do as they please, don’t they?”

This one especially, Nino thought, still feeling Sakurai’s angry glare on him, as though it was Nino’s fault for wanting his crew to have accurate records and for nobody to tamper with the god damn shuttles. Luckily the guy only came down to the flight deck every six weeks. Maybe Nino could switch shifts, avoid the guy in future. He certainly wasn’t eager to cross paths with him again.

At the conclusion of his shift, Nino pulled Chief Okada aside, explained the gaffes he’d made in dealing with Lieutenant Sakurai. Unexpectedly, Okada had laughed. “I’d yell at Sho-kun myself,” he said, describing the ship’s Navigator so casually, “but since he’s the one who jumps the ship and makes sure we don’t jump into the Sun, I guess I can’t stay angry with him, you know?”

Nino supposed the man had a point.

—

The message had gone out the previous afternoon, a memo to the entire crew straight from the bridge. It was just as Jun had told him the other day, that Captain Inohara wanted to hold a ship-wide meeting on the flight deck. It was scheduled for that evening at 1900 hours, and only a skeleton crew would keep the Suzaku flying, a handful on the bridge and the chief of engineering and some of her crew.

Nino wasn’t used to going down to the flight deck in his off-duty fatigues, the blue khaki jacket over his gray tank, the matching blue khaki trousers. Much as he liked his work, he preferred to keep it separate from his personal time. He found Ohno waiting for him at the lifts, his jacket unbuttoned and his fingers playing with the silver dog tag on the chain around his neck. Self-consciously, Nino pressed his fingers to the middle of his own chest, feeling the cool metal against his skin underneath his shirt.

“I wanted to check out the new pond they’ve got in the deck 12 park tonight,” Ohno complained as they waited for an available lift back down to the flight deck. “They said they were gonna stock it with fish.”

“Fishing. In space, Ohno-san?”

“Why not?” Ohno shot back, scratching an itch on the side of his nose. “I don’t care if the fish are synthetic or mechanical or whatever. Fishing is relaxing. I’d rather give it a go now before the you-know-whos come aboard.”

Nino grinned. Ohno was just as excited about the civilian passengers as Nino was. The flight deck was an especially dangerous place for an unauthorized visitor, and over the next several days Okada was having the Suzaku’s security team install extensive countermeasures at all flight deck entrances. Since the deck was so massive, there were plenty of places for little ones to try and sneak in, to dodge around crew reporting for duty.

Finally a lift arrived and they joined a few other scattered crew members inside. Once on deck 20, the usual secured entrance doors were wide open. Nobody had to scan in with their palmprint on the screen. Instead members of the security team with their stun pistols stood guard.

Nino and Ohno slipped around some of the other crewpeople, who didn’t know the deck like they did. A platform had been set up sometime after Nino and Ohno’s shift that afternoon, and Captain Inohara would address them all from the center of the flight deck facing aft. They found Yama-chan partway down the starboard side, sitting on top of Nori 43. Ohno headed up the stepladder Yamada had propped outside the shuttle, Nino following close behind. The Norimono’s pilot, Lieutenant Junior Grade Arimura, had only recently earned her wings and in gratitude for being assigned to the Suzaku straight out of Flight School, she’d been rather friendly to the crew who kept her shuttle in good order. Arimura waved as they joined her on top of Nori 43. 

It was a much better view up here, Nino decided as soon as he and Ohno had sat down next to Arimura and Yama-chan. Most of the crew never came down here, and they all huddled in the center of the flight deck. Thankfully everything had been cleaned up nicely, and Nino took a little pride in that. He’d had to scold a few of his juniors earlier that day for spilling a tub of slippery coolant. At least they’d gotten the place clean again for the Captain’s announcement.

There were murmurs all around, from the crew in the center of the deck to the chatter happening on the top of other Norimono shuttles around them. Nobody knew what this meeting was about. Even Chief Okada, who’d had to help coordinate the event with the security team, was in the dark about it.

Was there a problem at the Japan Space Authority? Were more ships being decommissioned? Had there been an attack on one of the colonies or any other kinds of troubles? The Suzaku had remained on its steady course back to Earth with no discernible changes to its flightpath.

A few minutes later, the sound of the JSA anthem echoed throughout the flight deck. All crew members standing on deck stood at attention. Nino hurriedly pulled Ohno to his feet and along with Arimura and Yamada, they stood at attention as well. 

He looked a lot friendlier in person than he had in his bio in the ship’s personnel database. The Suzaku’s captain, Inohara, stood on the platform, flanked on his left by his second in command, Executive Officer Nakai. To the captain’s right was someone Nino didn’t recognize, a woman in the same duty blue uniform as the captain and his XO. From this distance, Nino couldn’t see her insignia, but she didn’t seem to be a regular member of the bridge crew.

The JSA anthem quieted down, and Inohara’s voice boomed across the deck. “Thank you. At ease.”

Everyone relaxed, and once they saw crew on the other shuttles sit down, they did the same. And once Nino was seated, he had a feeling that this meeting was not about any attacks on colonies or decommissionings. For one, Captain Inohara was smiling brightly. Even Nakai the XO, notorious throughout the ship for being a ruthless practical joker, seemed to have a polite, genuine smile as well.

“You may be wondering why you’re all here today,” Inohara said.

“Obviously,” Nino mumbled, and Ohno elbowed him with a low chuckle.

“The Suzaku’s upcoming mission is not a normal one. Or as XO Nakai likes to say, those damn kids are coming.”

The crowd cracked up at that one. Nino was glad to know he wasn’t alone in being wary about it. Even the ship’s second-in-command was.

Inohara continued, his voice jovial and yet firm. “In less than two weeks, we’ll be in Earth’s orbit once again. We’ll then spend the next three to four days ensuring that one thousand, three hundred and thirty-eight Japanese citizens board this vessel safely. And then once we’re underway, we won’t be rid of them all again for another two weeks.” More chuckles in the crowd, but Inohara continued. “You’re not used to this. I’m not used to this.”

“Liar,” XO Nakai said audibly beside him, and there was more laughter. 

Unlike most career officers, Captain Inohara was a married man. His wife was a professor at the JSA Academy in Tokyo, and together they had two small children. With the Suzaku’s new mission, Inohara’s family would actually be joining him on board, his wife planning to work remotely. If the first civilian passenger transports went well, JSA was said to be considering expansion of the program to allow family members of other officers to come aboard. 

It was all a slippery slope, Nino thought bitterly. The more kids and clueless civilians aboard, the more risk. Traveling through space wasn’t as dangerous as it used to be, but there were still risks. External considerations like debris from an asteroid field or the rare but still possible pirate attack. Internal worries like radiation leaks, computer problems, hiccups in the life support systems. These first few voyages would have a huge impact on the future of Japanese space travel.

“I’ve heard your complaints and I’ve heard your concerns. How will these passengers affect my duties? How will these passengers affect my day-to-day experience aboard the Suzaku? How easy will it be for me to avoid them entirely? Do you notice a common thread here? _My_ duties. _My_ off time. This is how we’re thinking, and I’m not saying it’s right or wrong.”

“How will these passengers know that the milk bread in the crew cafeteria on deck 8 is off limits to them?” Nino asked aloud, hearing Ohno snicker.

Inohara held up his hands. “What we’re not thinking, Suzaku, is what it’s like for them. We’re academy graduates or we’re enlisted crew and all we’ve known since the day we were recruited is what ship life is like. We know our routines, we know our jobs. We know our expectations. But put yourself in their shoes. You’re a mother whose company has just re-assigned you to Amaterasu Station. You’ve got three children, and this new assignment is a five year contract. You’re not leaving your children. They have to go with you.”

Nino wondered what the hell Inohara was talking about, when he was going to get to the point.

“You have a long journey ahead of you to Amaterasu. It’s so far from Earth that the distance doesn’t even make logical sense. You want the safest journey for your children, the fastest journey because you’ve never left the Earth and the vacuum of space is scary as hell. You also don’t want to bankrupt yourself in the process. So you choose the Suzaku. It’s a good ship. But you know the crew doesn’t want you there. You’re a burden. You and your precious children are nothing more than human cargo to be transported. That’s what this mother would feel if she was here today. If she was here listening to the same complaints I’m overhearing.”

Ah, Nino realized. _Don’t be jerks to the passengers_ was the theme of the meeting. Couldn’t the captain have just written this in his ship-wide memo? Why were they all here for this when the message was rather obvious?

“Today I’ve called you all here to get you thinking more like that mother en route to Amaterasu and less like grouchy JSA lifers.” Inohara gestured for the woman behind him to step forward. “I’d like to introduce you all to the newest senior officer aboard. She’s a clinical psychologist from JSA Medical, and starting today she will be serving with the rank of Lieutenant Commander in charge of Civilian Passenger Welfare. I know it’s a mouthful, but let’s warmly welcome Matsushima Nanako-sensei!”

There was applause amidst the confusion as Inohara stepped aside and Matsushima-sensei stepped forward.

“Try not to fall in love, Ohno-san,” Nino said, noticing how his friend was gaping at the attractive older woman. “She’s your senior officer.”

Ohno did his best to keep his mouth closed, to not drool all over Arimura’s shuttle.

“Good evening, Suzaku. I am grateful for both your patience and attention. Those of you assigned to Cargo Bay 5 may have noticed several new crates on your manifest labeled as JSA Medical supplies that were not to be opened or scanned. I thank you for keeping your curiosity at bay,” Matsushima said, her voice light and calm. “With both the permission of JSA Command and Captain Inohara, I am here tonight to introduce you all to a pilot program. A program designed first and foremost to put you into the shoes of that mother Captain Inohara was talking about.”

“Who is this mother and what has she done?” Nino wondered aloud, his ears perking up nervously at the idea of a “pilot program.”

“Executive Officer Nakai, if you’d be so kind?”

The entire flight deck started quietly murmuring as XO Nakai departed the platform, moving to a standard silver cargo crate a few feet away that Nino hadn’t even noticed was there. From their vantage point on top of Arimura’s Nori, they were able to watch Nakai open the crate and haul out…a bag of rice?

It seemed about the same size as a 10 kilogram bag of rice, but whatever material the bag was made of seemed much stronger, sturdier. It was a silvery material, and as Nakai carried the bag back to the platform, Nino saw that someone had earnestly drawn a face on it. Well, they’d drawn eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

“Your artistic stylings leave something to be desired, Nakai-san,” Inohara teased, chuckling merrily as Nakai stood there awkwardly with the rice bag.

Matsushima-sensei raised her hand for quiet, and the confused whispers finally stopped. “This program will be ship-wide. I don’t care if you’re the XO or the crewman who fuels up a Kitsune. Everyone will be required to participate. Without further ado, I would like to introduce you to Project Papa-Mama, an initiative of JSA Medical’s Family Psychology Institute.”

“Is she on drugs?” Ohno mumbled, obviously no longer in love with the Lieutenant Commander. Project Papa-Mama?!

“Assignments have been randomized,” Matsushima explained. “You will be paired with another member of the Suzaku crew. The only exception is that someone will not be assigned to their direct superior. That means, for example, that I will not be paired with Captain Inohara, since I report directly to him. For the next month…”

The murmuring rose in volume and intensity, and Nino saw Matsushima offer a knowing smile on the platform. She hadn’t expected this to go over well, had she? Finally Captain Inohara himself had to order everyone to quiet down.

“For the next month,” Matsushima continued, “you and your crew partner will take part in a parenting simulation. Your child may look like a sack of rice, but JSA Medical in conjunction with some of our best scientific minds have placed a sophisticated batch of sensors inside each sim-child. You and your crew partner will be expected to tend to the sim-child’s needs, logging your progress continuously. I know it seems a bit silly and I know very well that you all work very hard and have important duties here aboard the Suzaku…”

“Sim-child?” Ohno said, scratching his head. “I have to carry a bag of rice around like a baby?”

“…but this pilot program is designed to place you in the shoes of a parent. To better understand their needs and concerns, since this ship will soon be full of families. It is my hope that Project Papa-Mama will be both a fun and challenging exercise in empathy as well as a method of building friendships throughout the ship. Interacting with your crewmates in this manner will strengthen your bonds. The Suzaku will become a welcoming environment for the people who are completely uprooting their lives, moving across the system. Thank you very much for your time.”

And then the uproar began, shouts and complaints from one end of the flight deck to the other. Nino was still more confused and alarmed than angry. A month? They’d have to endure this nonsense for a month on top of their existing duties? On top of having to board and settle in more than a thousand civilians in less than two weeks?

Beside him Ohno was repeating the word “sim-child” over again, still not seeming to make the connection. To Ohno’s other side, Yamada seemed to be in shock while Arimura was just laughing at the chaos.

“Something funny, Lieutenant?” Nino asked her.

Arimura leaned over so she could meet his eyes. “We did a simulation like this in junior high school. But then, it really was just a bag of rice.”

Before the crew could complain anymore, XO Nakai called for quiet. Even with the strange sack of rice baby in his arms, his voice carried out decisively. Captain Inohara stepped forward once more.

“I know you’re all thinking this will be a waste of time, but if even one of you, if just one of you takes this program to heart and becomes a better person, a more understanding and kind individual, then I think that’s a good thing.” The captain straightened up. “Assignments have already been sent to you while this meeting was taking place. These assignments will let you know who you’ve been partnered with and where you can report to pick up your…” 

Inohara looked back at Matsushima, who just winked at him. Inohara turned back around to face them. 

“…where you can both pick up your sim-child to get started. Further directions will also be in your assignment messages. This program is one hundred percent mandatory. Lack of participation will result in an official reprimand in your personnel file. Dismissed!”


	2. Chapter 2

Nino had prayed for the wrong thing.

On the way back to his quarters, he’d shut his eyes, praying desperately that he hadn’t been matched up with Matsumoto Jun for Project Papa-Mama. He liked Jun, honestly he did, but if there was a Hell, it would be a Hell where he had to co-parent a sack of rice with Matsumoto Jun.

With the slow, complaining exodus of crew members from the flight deck, Nino had had plenty of time to envision the horrors of such a match-up. Matsumoto Jun drawing a face on the sack of rice with painstaking detail. Matsumoto Jun shouting at Nino that he wasn’t putting in a million percent effort at being a father figure. Matsumoto Jun howling at him for being a bad influence on the fake baby with his sarcasm. “Babies can detect your sour attitude!” Jun would declare, cussing him out worse than if there was a smudge on his precious Kitsune.

So where Nino had been praying for a match with anyone-but-Jun, he’d forgotten about the incident from the other day. The incident where he’d suffered from extreme foot-in-mouth syndrome.

Because when Nino logged on to his personal computer console in his quarters, the name staring back at him as his Project Papa-Mama assignment was _Lieutenant Sakurai Sho, Navigation Crew (Chief)_.

“No,” Nino mumbled, thumping his head against his desk. 

How did this happen? And could he petition for a switch? After all, the one and only time he’d met Sakurai Sho, it had gone quite poorly. It wasn’t every day a superior officer threatened to write him up for insubordination.

Raising his head again, he frowned when he discovered that his eyes had not been playing tricks on him. There it still was, Sakurai Sho, his partner for the next month on this absurd assignment.

He read through the additional notes and directives. The sim-child had the same needs as any human child. The sensors inside the squishy device would go off when the child was in need of feeding or a bath or a nap. Each sim-child had a specific code that would be synched with a “parenting diary”. If the sensor went off, stating that it was time to feed baby, Nino or Sakurai would have to key it in within a certain time limit or it would be logged against them as neglect.

If they were on duty when the sim-child required attention, they were still expected to act. Consider a temporary shift change, the assignment directives suggested. Work together with your partner to get on a set schedule for balancing work and your “new family.”

“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read,” he said aloud to his empty quarters, shaking his head. 

He especially wasn’t interested in balancing work and a “new family” with Sakurai Sho. But his interest was of no interest to Lieutenant Commander Matsushima and the crackpots at JSA Medical who’d come up with this useless waste of time. 

Nino didn’t hate children. Far from it, he liked kids. They had a refreshing honesty that was all but crushed out of them by the time they became grown-ups. His sister had two children back home on Earth, and Nino had been thrilled to become an uncle each time. He loved his niece and nephew more than anything.

But at the same time, children didn’t belong here. Where he worked. Where he lived. When a lot of people in JSA hit 30, they tended to start thinking long term. Do you contract on for another long assignment? Do you consider getting discharged to pursue a personal life? Some people stayed in JSA for life - very few of them started families, and even the ones who did get married usually shacked up with someone else on their crew who was in it for the long haul.

Nino loved his niece and nephew, but he honestly hadn’t given a lot of thought to a family of his own someday. He’d just started a new assignment, so work was the priority, like it had been for all these years. And long-term, serious relationships weren’t arrangements he sought out. 

For some, the emptiness of space increased loneliness. It led people down the path of poorly thought out relationships with someone they already worked closely with, or even worse, with a superior or someone they were immediately superior to. That led to heartache and workplace friction at the same time. Maybe even reassignment elsewhere in the fleet. Nino preferred the anonymity of a shore leave hook-up or one night stands with a crewmate who wasn’t from the flight deck, someone who wouldn’t bother him again, get clingy, expect something from him other than perhaps more sex.

Nino liked his freedom. To work as he pleased. To spend his free time as he pleased. He had just turned thirty-three, but he didn’t live his life according to a pre-set timeline. By age this, you must do this…that sort of thing rubbed him the wrong way. Becoming someone’s husband, becoming someone’s father…that was a level of responsibility he couldn’t yet wrap his head around. 

But here it was, staring him right in the face. Simulation or no, the kind of life and responsibility Nino neither wanted nor sought out was being forced on him. And it came in the form of _Lieutenant Sakurai Sho, Navigation Crew (Chief)_. And the sack of rice that would be theirs to protect and love.

The computer started blabbing at him. “Incoming audio call from Petty Officer First Class, Crewman Specialist Ohno Satoshi.”

Nino rolled his eyes, seeing Ohno’s crew ID photo pop up in the corner of his screen. “Accept incoming audio call.”

“Nino, you’re not gonna believe this!” Ohno said, his voice filling Nino’s small crew quarters with merriment. And though Ohno had been super irritated on the way back to their quarters earlier, he didn’t sound that way now.

“Hmm,” Nino replied, “there was a computer glitch and you didn’t get an assignment.”

Ohno’s chuckle was rather endearing. “No, no. I got one, I got one.”

“It’s with Yama-chan and you can bully him into doing all the Papa-Mama work himself? That’s what I’d have done, but I didn’t get him.”

“No,” Ohno said, laughing again. “Not Yama-chan. But you’re kind of close. It’s Koike-sensei!”

Nino had to smile. Kind of close? Koike Eiko-sensei was one of the doctors in the Suzaku’s sickbay. She’d been the one to give Nino his first physical when he boarded a few weeks back. She was funny, no-nonsense. She’d ordered him to start using one of the crew gyms on board because she could “spot a lazy bastard a light year away.” Nino had liked her a lot, even if he had yet to set foot in the gym.

“You and Koike-sensei,” Nino mused. “What’s the advantage? Because she’s going to expect you to pull your weight.”

“I know,” Ohno said, “but she’s a doctor, right? She knows about health and nutrition and all that stuff. She’ll tell me what I have to do with the sim-child. I won’t have to think of anything, she’ll just tell me. It’s perfect!”

Speaking of spotting a lazy bastard a light year away.

“Congratulations, Ohno-san,” he answered. “I wish you and Koike-sensei all the best.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

He heard Ohno’s familiar chuckle of disbelief. “You don’t sound very happy.”

“Very perceptive. Have you read through the instructions? Does it say anything about switching partners?”

“It’s that bad?”

“Has potential.”

He heard Ohno hum for a few seconds before he spoke again. “I’m not seeing anything about switching. Who is it? Oh no, it’s not Matsumoto-kun, is it?”

Co-parenting a sack of rice with Jun was actually sounding more promising right about now. At least Nino could anticipate Jun’s behavior after so many years handling his moods and learning how to stay on his good side.

“Remember our friend from the bridge who likes to leave shuttle hatches open?”

“The one you pissed off?”

“I didn’t…” Nino began protesting before shutting up. It had been an exchange full of mutual dislike. He lowered his voice, grumbling a little. “Yes, the one I pissed off.”

Ohno laughed at him. “Wow. Have fun with that.”

Nino sighed. Assignments were out, and they’d been given a specific time to go up to Lieutenant Commander Matsushima’s offices to pick up the sim-child. He had no choice but to meet up with Lieutenant Sakurai tomorrow afternoon following his shift on the flight deck.

“Fun is not the word I’d use, Ohno-san,” he said. “I better go. It’s my last night as a childless man.”

“I say get drunk,” Ohno advised, still chuckling at him. “Nighty night.”

The call ended, and Nino spun lazily in his chair.

He wasn’t an officer, merely a high school-educated mechanic. His quarters weren’t much to brag about. His promotion to Petty Officer First Class back on the Hakutaka had given him a place to himself, having spent all of his Third Class and Second Class years bunking with another crewmate. On board the Suzaku, he was still only entitled to not much more than his bed, his console, chair, closet, and private toilet. He still had to share bathing facilities with the other crewmates on deck 8. Nino’s quarters were barely wider than his bed and nightstand.

He couldn’t help laughing, still spinning in his disbelief. “This is no place to raise a child,” he said aloud, wondering just where his precious new sack of rice might sleep.

—

He stepped out of his jumpsuit, shoving it in his laundry bag and setting it in the corner for the cleaning crew to take. He slipped into his off-duty fatigues, deciding to button up his jacket and comb his hair to look halfway presentable when he met up with Lieutenant Sakurai Sho. He’d already ruined their first impression, but maybe his second impression would be more tolerable.

Despite his irritation about this entire project, he’d somehow slept through the night. And then he’d managed to report for duty and get through his shift without agonizing over it. Nino had long possessed the magical ability to switch off unpleasant thoughts. It was easy to get lost in his work, in every tiny detail that required his full attention.

He left his quarters, heading for the lift and riding up to deck 3. Ohno had met with Koike-sensei earlier that afternoon, had been allowed to cut out of the last hour of their shift in order to go up and claim their sim-child. He hadn’t had time to do much more than send Nino a quick message saying that the pick-up process was well organized.

Nino emerged from the lift, heading along the port side in search of the Counseling Offices. The main Sickbay was also on deck 3, but on the other side. Nino hadn’t had much need of any counseling services since he’d only been aboard for a month. Homesickness, job stress, personal problems…every ship this big had a dedicated staff of counselors and psychologists to meet with. Today those offices had been turned over to an assembly line of parenthood.

He looked in from the outside, peeking without shame through the glass walls that lined the exterior of the Counseling Offices. In one office, crew were being checked in, their dog tags being scanned to confirm their identities. At the next station, the two partners were each handed a small tablet, similar to the ones they used on the flight deck to track their work. Must be the parenting diaries, Nino realized. And then at the third station, there were multiple staff members distributing the “babies.”

Nino peered through the glass, seeing staff members yank one of the sacks out of a crate and hand it to another staff member, who’d then scan some sort of code on it with a tablet. Then the “parents” were also instructed to scan their kid. From there, they were allowed to walk off with it. Nino didn’t recognize any of the crew members in here, although they did share one thing in common. Nobody looked too happy to be here.

“Crewman Specialist.”

Nino jolted at the man’s voice, nearly streaking the glass with his hand as he bumped against it in his surprise. He turned, finding Sakurai Sho once again, still in his duty uniform. Nino had to admit that it looked good on him. Some people were made for jumpsuits. Some people were made for duty blues. Sakurai Sho was made to fill out a JSA uniform. And fill it out well.

He inclined his head, hoping he didn’t look as startled and nervous as he felt when he met Sakurai’s gaze. There wasn’t as much overt hostility as there’d been in their first meeting, but the day was still young.

“What are the odds, sir?” Nino said. “Us getting matched up?” After our first pleasant and not at all awkward encounter, he thought.

“I haven’t calculated that,” Sakurai replied.

“I wasn’t asking you to…” he trailed off. A month of this to look forward to. He cleared his throat. “Let’s work well together, then, sir.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Sakurai responded. “I’m working a double shift and I have to be back on the bridge in half an hour.”

“Okay,” Nino replied. No small talk then.

Not feeling bold enough to walk ahead of him, Nino trailed Sakurai into the Counseling Offices, finding Lieutenant Commander Matsushima herself was manning the first station. She smiled warmly at Sakurai. Though he’d been so grouchy already, he plastered on a remarkably affable smile in front of his superior officer.

“Lieutenant Commander, good afternoon.”

“Lieutenant Sakurai, thank you for your cooperation. I know that your position is more stressful than most aboard the Suzaku. I appreciate your willingness to participate.”

“It’s no problem at all. I’m happy to lead by example,” Sakurai said, and Nino couldn’t help but look at him in disbelief. Who was this clone and what had he done with the real Sakurai Sho, who’d been bitching and grumbling just seconds ago?

Matsushima only regarded Nino with a polite smile before tapping something on her tablet. “Your tags, please. A formality, I know, but we’re aiming for full participation.”

Nino undid the first few buttons of his jacket, pulling out the silver tag he wore on a chain just like everyone else aboard. Instead of unbuttoning his uniform, Sakurai tilted his head back, roughly shoving his hand under his collar to yank on his chain. Nino swallowed at the strong line of his jaw, the bob of his Adam’s apple. Sakurai held his tag out for Matsushima with a proud smile. 

Show off. 

Matsushima scanned them both, nodding. “I have here before me the real Lieutenant Sakurai Sho and…” She offered Nino that same smile of _I have no idea who you are_. “…Petty Officer First Class Ninomiya Kazunari. Thank you both for participating and for arriving on time. Good luck!”

He followed Sakurai again, lining up to receive what turned out to be their “parenting tablets.” The man in charge explained that the tablets were the way their progress would be tracked. If the “baby” needed to be fed, they obviously couldn’t feed it for real, but the tablet would instruct them to tick a box for feeding time. They’d be required to do the same when putting the sim-child to sleep and when waking them come morning. The tablet would know all.

“Does it cry?” Nino asked. “The baby?”

“It chimes,” the counselor admitted, offering them a sad smile. “I’m going to hate that sound just as much as a real baby screaming before too long.”

Sakurai laughed, patting the man on the shoulder. “We’ll all get through this just fine, won’t we?”

But Nino didn’t miss the tight grip Sakurai kept on his “Papa-Mama Tablet” as they left the second station behind and queued up for the main event. It had to be exhausting, Nino thought with a tiny smile, being a bridge officer, knowing that everyone knew you and not really knowing anyone in return. Knowing that almost everyone you met was ranked lower than you were.

Everyone knew that the Chief Navigator was the one who plotted out FTL jumps. It was a collaborative effort between the ship’s main nav computer and the Navigator themselves, ensuring that the ship moved through space safely. Ensuring that a ship didn’t jump into the path of a comet or rematerialize into the side of a mountain. It required a lot of skill, so Nino would have to admire Sakurai Sho for that at least.

As a parent, however, he had no idea.

There were four other partnered teams ahead of them, the queue not really moving, and Nino broke the silence between them, knowing he was taking yet another risk.

“Double shift huh? Sucks.”

“I volunteered for it.”

He blinked. “Huh?”

Sakurai looked at him askance. “My colleague was feeling under the weather. I’m happy to step in.”

“Is that something you do on the regular, sir? Work double shifts?”

“No, only if necessary, but I don’t mind it.” The Lieutenant was definitely suspicious of his line of questioning now. “Is it different on the flight deck?”

“Of course we don’t do anything important like jumping the ship,” Nino said, hoping he didn’t sound as bitter as he could have, seeing the awestruck way people were looking at Sakurai Sho. Officers like Sakurai were on the bridge - a place few other crew would ever visit. The place where all the big decisions were made and everyone else had to follow them. “The Chief just rotates us around. It’s his call on who will fill in where. It’s not a volunteer thing.”

“I see.”

“And working a double shift is dangerous,” Nino continued, realizing instantly that he’d once again said something he shouldn’t have. He’d literally just implied that Sakurai Sho was putting the ship in danger. “I mean…I mean that there’s a lot of activity on the flight deck. A lot of close work, tedious and repetitive work. Two shifts back to back on the flight deck, it’s, uh, it’s…uh…”

Sakurai raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for Nino to try and crawl back out of the hole he’d just dug himself into.

“Lots of…loud…loud noises. And uh, physical movement. Very detail-oriented job, you see. So a double shift. Right. It’s not advisable, is all,” Nino finished weakly.

“Noted,” Sakurai said. “I’ll do my best not to kill us all.”

Nino shut up, wanting to kick himself for saying something so stupid. This was really unlike him, too. Despite being the type of person who preferred his own company most of the time, he’d been aboard ships for a long time now. He understood the rhythms, the people, the banter. Awkward conversation was rare for him. What the hell was it about Sakurai Sho that turned him into a babbling fool?

They made it to the front of the line, and when the crew member held out the sack with the thick gray cover, Sakurai gallantly held out his arms to take it. They were both instructed to scan the code on the backside of the sack, Nino’s new Papa-Mama Tablet lighting up successfully.

“Any technical issues, please report it to us,” the crew member stated. “Everyone here in our offices has been trained to troubleshoot baby problems.”

“Thank you very much,” Sakurai said, turning around with the sim-child in his arms and walking off without so much as a word to Nino.

That left Nino to hurry after him once more, trailing him like a sad puppy. Sakurai was faster than Nino expected, halfway down the corridor before he caught up with him.

“Wait!” Nino said. “Lieutenant!”

Sakurai finally paused, turning around and offering him another irritated smirk. “Yes?”

“Uh…you’re just taking him?”

“ _Him_?” Sakurai leaned back against the wall, hugging the sack of rice against himself. His condescending smile was way too handsome. “How do you know it’s a him?”

“Did you want to decide on that now?” Nino asked, fumbling with the tablet in his hand. “A name or something?”

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Sakurai said, an impatient edge to his voice. “It’s a quiet day, so I’ll keep Junior up with me on the bridge for second shift. Then I’ll drop by later this evening so you can take him overnight. I’ll send you a message about my availability tomorrow.”

“Excuse me?” Nino asked. What was with this guy? “Your _availability_?”

“Ninomiya, we hit the Kuiper Belt in three days and I’ll be jumping us to Jupiter. I’ve got meetings with Engineering to perform checks on the FTL, I have to have back-up routes plotted in case of other traffic in the area, and then I take part in senior staff meetings daily. Once we’re back to Earth, I’ll be able to take the lead again and…”

“Just hold on a moment!” Nino said, raising his voice loud enough for another pair of crew members to turn around where they were waiting by the lifts. He licked his lips, infuriated. “Lieutenant, there’s no ‘taking the lead’ in this.”

Sakurai held out the sim-child, annoyed. “Do you want it now then? I can try and find some time tomorrow.”

“You’re not understanding me. We have to work together.”

“What part of the orders I gave you are unclear? What part of those orders aren’t about shared responsibility?”

“You don’t give me orders on this,” Nino said decisively, seeing the look on Sakurai’s face sour in an instant. “The whole point of this project, sir, is that I have an equal say. Working together doesn’t mean Ninomiya takes the kid until Sakurai feels like making time for it. This is 50-50. You are my superior, granted, but not in this. Not in this, sir.”

“Ninomiya…”

“No,” he said, stomping his foot. “No, you don’t get to back off and claim that your job is more important or more essential than mine. I’m a member of this crew just like you, and I have important duties and responsibilities too. Just because you outrank me doesn’t mean you can push me around. We’re going to work out a schedule, you and me, and we’re going to keep this fair. If I’m going to be inconvenienced, Lieutenant, then so are you.”

Before Sakurai could protest, a gentle chime emitted from the sack in Sakurai’s arms. Four notes repeated twice and then the tablet in Nino’s hand lit up, as did the tablet where Sakurai had shoved it in the pocket of his uniform slacks.

Nino looked at the screen. He smirked, showing it to Sakurai. 

_Please give baby a name!_

Sakurai’s eyes were wicked then. “How about Noisy, like his papa?”

“How about Arrogant, like his other papa?” Nino shot back.

Sakurai actually laughed at that. “Very good. You’re a passionate fellow, Ninomiya-san. Anyhow, all the men in the Sakurai family, at least in the last several generations have names that begin with S. Any traditions in your family?”

“No.”

“Then how about Shota?”

“Fine,” Nino said, keying it in to the tablet. He didn’t care enough to fight for anything different. The screen changed and now at the top there was a box containing a photograph of a baby with a cute little tuft of black hair. To the left of the photograph was the name SHOTA. “Oh no, it has a face now.”

“Ah, this is too real,” Sakurai admitted, turning the sack of rice in his arms. From the sound of it, the thing really did just have rice inside. And a crazy sensor. But mostly rice. “Look, I’m sorry if I insulted you. I’m not used to people being so…”

“Critical?”

“No,” Sakurai replied, laughing gently. Nino preferred that sound to Sakurai’s stubbornness. “No, I receive plenty of criticism from superiors. But it’s constructive and job-related. What I’m not used to is people telling me how to schedule my life. I’m a bit…particular about that sort of thing.”

“So am I,” Nino said. “Look. You said you’ll come drop him off later. That’s fine with me, it is. I’m on deck 8, so if you want to stop by we can work on a schedule that works for both of us. Especially now that our bag of baby has a face and a name. I want to be on the same page about this stupid project, that’s all I’m saying.”

“I’ll let you know when I’m on my way.”

“Then I’ll see you this evening.”

Sakurai headed for the lift, “Shota” held protectively in his arms. “Say bye bye,” Sakurai said, shaking the awkward sack a little.

Nino waved, unable to keep from smiling in return.

—

He had just gotten back from dinner when the chime went off at his door. Checking the monitor, he was confused when he saw a strange man in duty blues holding a sack of rice. Well, a sim-child.

He pressed the intercom button. “Yes, who is it?”

The guy had a friendly face and a big smile, holding the sim-child protectively in his long arms. “Yo! You’re Ninomiya, right?”

Nino held in a sigh of complaint, seeing the Lieutenant’s insignia at the guy’s collar and the silver star above his breast pocket. Another bridge officer, just like Sakurai. “Yes, I’m Ninomiya.” It’s on the nameplate outside my door, he didn’t say.

“Hey there, Sho-chan wanted me to drop him off,” the guy said, wiggling the sack of rice. 

_Sho-chan?_

“Lieutenant Sakurai?”

“Yup.”

Nino pressed the button beside his door, allowing it to slide open. The lanky Lieutenant held out the sack of rice. Nino took it, holding his “son” in his arms for the first time. It was an awkward experience.

“And you are?”

“Me? Aiba Masaki, at your service,” the man said in his breathy voice, smiling from ear to ear. “Chief Tactical Officer.”

Nino shuffled Shota to his left side, holding out his right hand and letting Lieutenant Aiba shake it enthusiastically. The Chief Tactical Officer was responsible for the Suzaku’s defenses, its shielding, as well as its offensive weaponry. “Wow, not every day I meet someone like you.”

Aiba was still smiling. Nino wondered if there was something wrong with him. “Sho-chan is in a meeting with Captain Inohara right now and since I was rotating off, he asked me to drop your kid off here. He didn’t exactly want to go into the Captain’s office with that thing, no offense.”

“Right,” Nino said.

“Oh, and he told me to tell you he’ll come by whenever his meeting’s over.”

Nino nodded. “Well, thank you very much, Lieutenant. I appreciate it.”

Aiba-san stared at him, and Nino could only stare back. After a too-long silence, Nino cleared his throat.

“Um, Lieutenant? Do you need something else from me?” This was the guy they depended on to fire their gun batteries if they came under attack?

Aiba waved a hand in front of his face. “No, no, sorry! It’s just…you don’t look like Sho-chan described.”

Nino raised an eyebrow. “And how did he describe me?”

Aiba leaned forward, barely holding in a giggle. “He said you were disagreeable. And a slouch.”

Nino put his finger back on the button for his door. “If there’s nothing else, Lieutenant? I’m sure my child is about to whine for my attention.”

Disagreeable? Nino was the one who looked ‘disagreeable’? What the hell did that even mean?

“See you around, Ninomiya!” Aiba was able to say before Nino shut the door in his face. Superior officer or no.

“Disagreeable,” Nino said aloud, moving over to the bed to set down Shota. He found himself addressing the bag of rice, if only because it wasn’t as odd as talking to himself. “I’m the disagreeable one?”

Shota, being a bag of rice with a sensor inside, did not react.

Nino growled, reaching for his parenting tablet. There was a “Custody” setting on it which denoted which parent was currently watching the child. Throughout the afternoon, the Custody setting had been set to “Sakurai Sho.” While Nino’s tablet had lit up with alerts, it hadn’t made any noise or caused him any serious disturbance since he had apparently been off the clock.

He was glad to see that Sakurai had been fairly attentive. Notifications had gone out about feeding, about nap time, about a diaper change. Each of these had been checked off by Sakurai within a minute of the alert. Nino supposed that the little chime would be disruptive on the Suzaku’s bridge, so he’d taken care of things quickly.

Nino switched the Custody setting over to his name, and within seconds the chime went off. He’d only heard the chime the first time when it had prompted him to give Shota a name. But the chime the bag of rice was emitting now was really noisy, the same four notes over and over again while Nino’s tablet lit up with a new alert.

“Shota, you’re annoying!” he complained, the noisy chime filling his small quarters. The tablet informed him that it was time for Shota to be given a bath. Nino pressed his finger to the check box, and mercifully the chiming stopped.

Nino understood a little better why Sakurai hadn’t wanted to bring Shota into his personal meeting with the Captain, even though a family man like Inohara would understand better than most.

The minutes ticked by with no sign of Sakurai Sho, so Nino set to work on his own. Shota’s irritating chime went off twice in the next hour, once to be fed and again to be put down for a nap. Nino simply kept his tablet within reach, hitting the check box on the screen as soon as Shota started blaring for attention. He supposed this wasn’t the intention of the program, that he was expected to read the monitor and better understand his child’s needs, but he was a bit busy figuring out when he didn’t have to have Shota around at all.

He’d created a Parenting Calendar using one of the settings on his tablet. Since Sakurai couldn’t be bothered to make a timely appearance, Nino had gotten started without him. His lateness…Nino found that to be far more “disagreeable.” Nino filled in all of his anticipated shifts, making a note that he had Thursdays completely free and noting that he would take Shota for a bit longer on those days. He took every other night with the baby, assigning the night ahead to Sakurai out of spite for being late.

He made additional notes. When he usually took his dinner in the crew cafeteria. When he usually had a bath, since he was definitely not taking a bag of rice in there. When he liked to visit the baseball simulator on deck 14.

He had just about everything filled in when his door chimed. Nino looked over to his bed where Shota had obviously not moved. “Your Papa’s late,” he mumbled.

Opening the door, he found an utterly exhausted Sakurai Sho. Finally off duty after two shifts and a meeting with the Captain, he’d unbuttoned his uniform jacket, his gray shirt peeking out beneath. After their previous meetings, where Sakurai had been buttoned up and put together, Nino now learned that it was in fact possible to see a disheveled Lieutenant Sakurai.

“Sorry,” Sakurai said, scratching at the back of his head. “There’s a lot of activity around Jupiter right now. Trying to plot our jump there has not been fun.”

Nino had to admit that would be stressful. Jumping from the Kuiper Belt to Jupiter was a rather short jump compared to most. The further a ship jumped, the harder it was to calculate. The positions of the stars, the planets, space in general all those light years away, you had to do a lot of intelligent guesswork. You had to have correct star charts programmed into the nav computers. But you also had to make sure that you weren’t going to jump into the flight path of a 500-year comet the star charts hadn’t accounted for.

But short jumps had their challenges as well. All the countries of Earth with a space colonization program had their assigned star systems, just like the Japan Space Authority did. But their home solar system was a free-for-all, colonization of the planets and asteroids having begun years before the rest of the quadrant had been evenly divided up. Jupiter was surrounded by space stations from dozens of countries, its moons scattered with colonies from the Iberian Alliance, the United Russian Fleet, the Chinese Space Command, and several others. The space around Jupiter was crowded with their populations and hundreds of ships both military and civilian-operated going to and fro at any time.

Sakurai had to make sure they were jumping into a safe spot far enough away from that potential traffic jam. But he also had to make sure they were jumping into a safe spot that would keep them on schedule for their arrival on Earth. Nino had been through hundreds of jumps in his career, he was certain of it. He’d always known it was a risky thing, but it wasn’t his job to worry about it. Now he knew the person who was responsible. Now he knew the person who held all their lives in the balance.

But even though Nino sympathized with the guy and his challenging job, he wasn’t going to let him off the hook.

Nino stepped back. “Come on in, have a seat. You look like you’re about to drop.”

Sakurai’s face seemed almost grateful, but Nino could see the slightest hint of judgment as he had a seat in Nino’s chair. Being a bridge officer, and before that an academy graduate in the command track, Sakurai Sho had probably not had to live in quarters this small before.

“Since you were busy,” Nino continued, setting his tablet before Sakurai, “I went ahead and got started on a schedule.”

Sakurai set his own tablet down beside Nino’s. He tapped a button on his screen that said “Sync” and the information was instantly shared between them. Sakurai opened the calendar and immediately opened his mouth to protest.

“You were late,” Nino said immediately, cutting Sakurai off. “You get the baby tonight.”

“I need to sleep,” Sakurai protested.

“Which is why I’m taking him the next two nights. Since you have to jump us to Jupiter, I figured you’d want to be better rested then.”

“Oh.”

Nino sat down on the bed, watching Sakurai with a grin. “Unless that’s too…disagreeable.”

Sakurai looked over at him, flushing a bit.

“I met Lieutenant Aiba earlier. Nice guy.”

Sakurai held up a hand. “Ninomiya, I’m sorry…I was…”

“Frustrated to be paired with someone who slouches?”

Sakurai winced. “I told him that in confidence.”

Nino chuckled. “I do slouch though, I’ll admit it freely. I’m bending down, crawling under consoles all day on board those shuttles. It’s given me a hunchback in my old age.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-three.”

Sakurai rolled his eyes. “I’m thirty-four. Don’t ever say the word ‘old’ in my presence again please.”

“Noted, sir.” Nino paused. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“We’re both off-duty, but thanks for remembering,” Sakurai replied. He glanced back down at the tablet, looking through Nino’s rather detailed calendar and actually seeming to be impressed with it. “Go ahead.”

“When we meet like this…about Project Papa-Mama, I mean, do we still have to acknowledge ranks? It seems odd calling you ‘sir’ when I’m not on duty.”

Sakurai nodded. “It does. Sakurai-san is fine.”

Nino leaned back a little, grinning. “I have to call the father of my child ‘Sakurai-san’?”

Sakurai gripped the arms of the chair. “Ninomiya!”

Nino laughed. He’d known guys like Sakurai Sho in the fleet before. Utterly devoted to their jobs. Extremely smart, extremely serious people. They weren’t used to joking around unless they were with people at their own level. They had reputations to uphold. “I’m teasing you.”

If Nino didn’t know any better, he’d say Lieutenant Sakurai Sho was blushing. Adorably. “This whole project is weird.”

“It really is. But it’s just for a month, right? We’ll get through it. Together, if you’ll allow yourself to work with a disagreeable fellow like me.”

“I’m sorry,” Sakurai muttered, trying to hold back an embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry for describing you that way, Ninomiya-san. You’ve actually been very diligent.” He gestured down to the parenting tablet. “I appreciate you taking charge on this, I do.”

“You can just call me Nino, if you’d like. My friends call me that.”

“I’m your superior officer…”

“Yeah, but you’re also the father of my child.”

Sakurai shuddered. “I really wish you wouldn’t describe it that way. It sounds very…permanent.”

“So then I shouldn’t suggest that we refer to one another as Kazu-Papa and Sho-Papa?”

“Oh my god, definitely not.” Sakurai did allow himself to laugh, a hearty laugh that had him wiping a tear from his eye. “Oh, that would be a nightmare.”

Nino pretended to look offended. Sakurai was very easy to tease, and he intended to take advantage of it…at least while he could get away with it. “I thought Kazu-Papa was a cute moniker. I was going to have some Kazu-Papa and Sho-Papa friendship bracelets made.”

Sakurai held up a hand, still laughing, begging him to stop. “I’ll call you Nino! I’ll call you that if you please please please never say ‘Sho-Papa’ ever again!”

“Can I at least call you Sho-san?”

Sakurai finally calmed down, rubbing his eyes. He was going to fall asleep in Nino’s chair if he wasn’t careful. “Yeah, yeah, if I’m not on-duty, that’s fine.”

“Now would you like to add your own shifts to this calendar tonight or should we reschedule?”

“No, it’s fine. I came here to accomplish something. I’ll do it.”

Nino stopped his teasing, leaning forward as Sakurai went over each day on the schedule with him. They both worked first shift, which meant that one of them would always have Shota with them while they were on duty. They both agreed it wasn’t worth switching to another shift and then having to switch back in only a month. Sakurai’s position on the bridge was a key one, and Nino wasn’t too eager to put further demands on Chief Okada, who was already stuck shifting people because of Project Papa-Mama.

Even though Nino thought Sakurai was one of the busiest people on the ship, he sure didn’t carve out much alone time for himself where he actually could. When he wasn’t on duty, he was engaged in a bevy of activities, all scheduled with exactness. Nino watched as Sakurai keyed in four visits to the officers’ gym per week along with two soccer practices per week, an informal league made up of people from all over the ship. He had a working dinner with his Navigation team once a week, followed by a visit to the Suzaku’s astrometrics lab where his team inspected instruments and telescopes used in their FTL jump calculations.

As he tapped through each day, Sakurai remembered other dates and appointments. A scheduled haircut, dinner with a friend, a dental check-up in Sickbay. He occasionally filled in on piano for an Engineering crew jazz ensemble. Sakurai also undertook voluntary cross-training in other departments, an hour or two a week with Lieutenant Aiba and his tactical team or with Lieutenant Commander Matsuoka and the security team. 

Nino didn’t have to ask him why he did something like that. Familiarizing yourself with all the key departments on a ship…it meant Sakurai had a lot of ambition. He wanted to be a Captain someday, there was no mistaking it.

As Sakurai entered all his appointments and meetings, Nino shrank back a little, intimidated. Compared to Sakurai, he did very little. He had few commitments, but Sakurai was already nodding, noting that he’d take Shota along to his soccer practice, that he’d manage somehow to split their “custody” equally. 

Nino wondered if he really was being disagreeable.

“You don’t like to be alone, do you?”

Sakurai paused, finger poised over the tablet as he looked up and met Nino’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

Nino shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed. “We’re just…we’re very different, that’s all. I like time to myself. Or more like I need time to myself. Hours where I can just relax, watch video on the Net. Down time, you know? But you, Sho-san, you’ve always got something to keep you busy, running all over the ship.”

He looked back at the tablet. “I guess that’s true. Not that there’s anything wrong with how you spend your time. I think as long as you put in your duty time, how you spend your free hours is up to you.”

“I just didn’t really know how busy you were.”

“I don’t think about it that way,” Sakurai admitted. “I just…I don’t know. I guess I’ve always been this way.”

“And it’ll be okay? With Shota?”

He nodded in reply, finally allowing himself to yawn. “It’ll be okay. Well. I suppose I need to put this bag of rice to bed.”

Nino got to his feet, pulling Shota up. He’d only had him a few hours and he was already getting rid of him. He wondered if he was being unfair. But Sakurai took him without another complaint, heading for the door, parenting tablet in his pocket.

“Thanks for your hard work today,” Sakurai said, offering a tired smile. 

Nino opened his door, letting Sakurai out into the corridor. He crossed his arms, feeling ashamed. He supposed those feelings would shift, keeping Shota and his noisy chime the next few nights in a row. “If you need to make any changes to the schedule, just give me a heads up.”

“I’m on deck 4. My quarters, I mean,” Sakurai said. He was still smiling, not at all the grouchy man he’d been earlier that day. Perhaps Nino had misjudged him a little, had caught him only in rough patches so far. “If you could come by before first shift tomorrow, that would be great.”

Nino usually slept in until the last minute, but given the overscheduled needs of his partner in this project, he supposed he could go a month without that kind of laziness.

“That’s fine.” He rested his hand against the doorframe, taking in the rather odd sight of his superior officer holding a bag of rice like it was some precious commodity. “I hope he doesn’t keep you up all night.”

“I’m a heavy sleeper,” Sakurai admitted. “So if we get any bad marks for missing something in the middle of the night, I accept full responsibility.”

Nino looked at his feet. “You still came down after your busy day. I appreciate it.”

“It’s fine.”

He looked back up, taking in Sakurai Sho with new understanding. His tired brown eyes, the slump of his shoulders, the gentle smiling curve of his mouth. Nino supposed that if he really did have to share parenting duties with someone, it didn’t hurt to share them with someone as accomplished as Lieutenant Sakurai.

Or as handsome, Nino thought, wishing he could stifle such an irresponsible feeling.

“Good night, Sho-san. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Sakurai nodded. “Good night, Ninomi…” Nino’s breath caught when Sakurai stopped himself, his soft smile difficult to ignore. “I mean, good night, Nino.”


	3. Chapter 3

In the month he’d served aboard the Suzaku, Nino had not yet been to deck 4. Decks 4 and 5 were home to the officers, those who’d graduated from the JSA Academy or JSA Flight School. Aside from the Captain and XO, everyone with a rank, from the freshest academy graduates entering the fleet with the rank of Ensign up to Lieutenant Commander was quartered on these two decks. 

Nino knew that Jun was somewhere around here on deck 4, though Nino had not yet been invited for a visit. He remembered being in Jun’s quarters on the Hakutaka before, though. It was much larger than Nino’s. Once you got past Lieutenant Junior Grade and into the Lieutenant rankings, you were somehow entitled to more room. On the Hakutaka, Jun had a sitting room and a separate bedroom as well as a full bathroom all to himself. No sharing.

Nino expected a similar set-up had been given to Sakurai Sho. In his day-to-day life, Nino didn’t really think too hard about things like officers’ quarters. Most of the people he worked with were enlisted crew. Most of the people on the ship were enlisted crew, whether they worked on the flight deck, in facilities management, in the cafeteria, in the cargo bay. The officers ran the show. The officers flew the shuttles and the Kitsunes. 

Emerging from the lift, he wasn’t surprised to see the separation between doors. On deck 8 where Nino was stuck, his nearest neighbor was only a few feet away down the corridor. On deck 4, they could probably fit three or four enlisted crew quarters in the space they allotted for one officer’s quarters. And Nino suspected the view was much better too.

On deck 8, Nino had a small window just behind his bed in the bulkhead, thick glass that could probably take a few dozen rounds before shattering. The glass was tinted green, lending the vast darkness of space a rather sickly color. Nino usually left the window covered, only opening the cover when they were in orbit of some planet or asteroid, when the ship wasn’t screaming through space at sublight speed. In Jun’s old quarters the glass had been twice as large, no tint. The stars still streamed by but you didn’t feel like you were submerged underwater in a strange green ocean.

The deck was similar in construction to deck 8. Crew quarters along the exterior bulkheads, crew facilities in the center. While deck 8 housed bathing facilities for men and women along with a cafeteria, library, and the 8-Ball crew lounge, deck 4 didn’t have to waste space on baths. 

The cafeteria was twice as large, and peering through the glass, Nino saw that they had a fancier set-up. Instead of long tables and benches there were booths, cushioned chairs. Instead of a library, deck 4 had a bigger lounge and Nino nearly gasped when he saw the full bar in the center of the room, a bartender crewman on duty mixing drinks even at this hour, most likely for the third shifters who’d just come off for the day. The 8-Ball just had a refrigerator stocked with cans of beer. The officers’ gym was also on deck 4, though you couldn’t see inside. Nino suspected the equipment in there was better too.

In his jumpsuit and ready for the day, Nino found Sho’s quarters on the starboard side, shaking off his jealousy. He pressed the buzzer, holding his parenting tablet in hand. According to the log, Shota had woken up five times during the night. Sho had checked in within a few minutes each time, though on the last one it had taken him twelve and a half minutes. Nino was not looking forward to his own watch that night.

Sho’s door slid open, though he didn’t look as tired as Nino had expected. He wasn’t in uniform yet, and Nino gulped at the sight of him. The standard gray sleeveless top over a non-standard pair of red boxer briefs. Sho had his toothbrush in his mouth, was still working it over his molars when the door opened. Nino’s eyes widened at the biceps he’d been hiding under his uniform jacket…

“Morning,” Sho said with minimal cheer, pulling his toothbrush out of his mouth, his lips covered in foamy white paste. “You’re early.”

“Thought you’d appreciate it,” Nino managed to squeak out, trying to look into Sho’s face, not at the way his underwear clung to his thighs. Not at his muscles, not at his collarbone poking out from the low collar of his shirt. 

“Come on in,” Sho said, apparently not embarrassed to be half naked in front of him. He simply turned around, resuming his brushing and walking off.

And then Nino got to see the perfect, round curve of his ass in his underwear as he headed back to his bathroom. Now he knew that this was going to be a very difficult month indeed.

“Have a seat!” Sho called from his bathroom, and Nino heard the sound of his sink turn on.

He stood there in the sitting room, fumbling against the wall for the button to close Sho’s door. The sitting room alone was larger than Nino’s entire quarters. It had the same sparse furniture that Nino remembered from Jun’s quarters on the Hakutaka. A pair of blue armchairs and a matching loveseat, a low metal table in the middle. There was a bookcase built into the wall, and Sakurai’s was so full that he had books stacked on top of each other haphazardly. Whatever didn’t fit was apparently left on his table, the thing covered in books with others shoved underneath. Paper books. Very old-fashioned, Nino thought with a smile.

Where Jun’s old quarters had artwork of various Kitsune models over the centuries covering the walls, Sho’s walls were more like a travel guidebook. The sitting room walls were covered in framed photographs. Beaches from Earth. A domed city he recognized as one of the larger American colonies on Neptune’s moon, Triton. A photo of Sho with some other people gesturing out the window of some ship or space station, the five of them with silly expressions as they pointed to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

There were more photos on the walls of Sho’s bedroom, Nino passing through the archway. Even Sho’s bed was bigger, Nino thought grimly, envious of all the space that Sho had to himself here. Sho who was always out exercising or working or socializing. His bedroom was a mess, the sheets askew. His window was covered up, probably to block out starlight while he slept. Nino found Shota perched on the chair at Sho’s personal computer console. There was a framed photograph beside Sho’s computer screen, the same people from the Great Red Spot photo.

In this photograph they were somewhere Nino didn’t recognize. They were in some domed city, but there were twin suns off in the distance behind them. The surface of the planet or moon all around them glowed, almost as though it was a sheet of ice reflecting the sunslight.

“Shin-Benzaiten.”

Nino turned, seeing Sho in the doorway of his bathroom. At some point he’d slipped into his uniform trousers, was reaching for his jacket where it hung in the closet. He was going to hide those arms, Nino thought regretfully.

“Sorry for snooping,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of space.”

Sho didn’t seem to mind, pulling on his jacket. “That was taken on Shin-Benzaiten maybe…seven years ago? My dad was assigned way out there for a while.”

Nino took another look at the picture. A smiling older man who looked just like Sho, but with thinning hair and spectacles. Beside him, presumably, was Sho’s mother. The other two Nino guessed were siblings - a younger sister and brother. Shin-Benzaiten was about as far from Earth as you could get in JSA territory. Even with a ship that could jump reasonable distances, it would take months to get home.

“He’s JSA?”

“The diplomat side,” Sho explained, doing up his buttons. “Not the military side. He used to be the JSA Ambassador to NASA. When I was a kid, I visited a bunch of the American colonies. When I got to the academy, he got assigned to headquarters so he was home for a while. Then once I was in the fleet, they started bumping him all over the place. Shin-Benzaiten, I used up almost a year’s worth of shore leave getting there and back, and I could only stay for a week.”

Nino had never been outside of Japan’s territory, whether on Earth or elsewhere in the quadrant. Even his shore leave activities had brought him to Japan-owned resorts and colonies. “So you’ve traveled a lot?”

Sho nodded. “When I was growing up, it was mostly on school breaks though. My mom works for JSA too, she’s an instructor at the academy. Even with my dad’s job, she didn’t want us growing up all over the place. We stayed home in Tokyo with her when Dad was on assignment. I mostly saw him during the summer break.”

Nino frowned in sympathy. “My parents are chefs,” Nino explained, lifting Shota from the chair and sitting down. “Chefs in Tokyo, I mean. They’ve never even left Earth.”

“Chefs, huh?” Sho answered, looking impressed. “Do they do catering?”

Nino shrugged. He sent messages back and forth with his parents all the time, but they rarely talked about work. They didn’t understand much about Nino’s job, other than that he “fixed things” and the two of them mostly talked to Nino about weird parent things like what the neighbors were up to, taxes, the influx of “asteroid types” moving to Earth for a lower cost of living.

“Maybe. Why?”

Sho grinned. “My dad’s going to be 65 in a few months. Mom wants to throw him a big party. Just curious.”

“And what do I get for the referral?” Nino asked, spinning a little in Sho’s chair.

Sho pointed at him, looking pleased with himself. “My dad can get travel visas for just about anywhere. If your parents ever do want to get out of town or out of the solar system, I’ve got the hook-up. As far as leaving JSA territory goes.”

“They’re just about as lazy as me, Sho-san, but I’ll pass along your generous offer.”

Sho bustled around his messy bedroom, finding a comb under his nightstand and hurrying it through his hair. “So where will you keep Shota while you work? Flight deck’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Nino admitted. “But we’ve got some backpacks. Some of the crew prefer hauling their tools around that way instead of at their waist. I was thinking of carrying Shota around on my back.”

“That sounds cute,” Sho said, laughing gently.

Nino got to his feet, feeling a little too comfortable already sitting around Sho’s quarters. “Well, I know you’ve got a lot of work to do. So I’ll bring Shota to you after my shift, then I’ll expect you tonight?”

“That sounds perfect.”

Sho escorted him to the door, Nino taking in a few last glimpses of Sho’s quarters. The clutter, the photos, the stacks of books. The Lieutenant seemed like an even bigger nerd than he had at first glance. Then again, when they’d met, he’d been updating Nori star charts one by one…by choice. He should have known.

“Good luck,” Sho said, seeming glad to be rid of the bag of rice. “You’ll need it.”

—

Though they’d faced quite a personality clash at the start, the first few days of Project Papa-Mama went off without any serious catastrophes. Nino considered sleep to be an altogether precious time, and he was definitely not fond of waking in the dead of night to tap a glowing screen. But he got used to it.

Carrying Shota around on his back during his shift didn’t last very long. While he and Ohno inspected shuttles, Nino usually left the backpack on the ground, keeping his parenting tablet in his tool belt to make sure he could hear the obnoxious chime over the other flight deck noise. 

Ohno had teased him relentlessly, but from his privileged position as someone who didn’t work the same shift as his partner. As Ohno had predicted, Koike-sensei was doing the majority of the work when it came to Project Papa-Mama. Ohno usually looked after “Infant” during the afternoon and overnight. Neither of them had wanted to give the sim-child a real name. 

He and Ohno were just finishing up a Nori tune-up when the ship-wide alert klaxon went off, echoing throughout the flight deck.

“Action stations, action stations. Set Condition Three throughout the ship. This is not a drill. Repeat. Action stations, action stations. Set Condition Three throughout the ship. All hands prepare for a jump. The clock is now set at ten minutes. We are at Condition Three. All hands prepare for a jump.”

Nino nearly smacked his head against the Nori’s computer console in his surprise. He knew that voice. Well, it had been the same voice all along, but now he knew who it belonged to. Ship alerts were announced by the Suzaku’s Chief Tactical Officer. And that person was Lieutenant Aiba Masaki. Nino couldn’t help smiling, getting to his feet and quickly shutting down the lights and panels inside the Nori. So it was Lieutenant Aiba all this time. He’d sounded rather cool, a far cry from the time they’d met before.

He found Ohno waiting for him, performing his final check outside the Nori. “Ready?”

Nino smacked the hatch button, letting it shut behind him. “Yep, all set.”

The ships of the fleet operated on a set of five conditions. Condition Five was peacetime operation while in orbit or while docked. Condition Four, which was the most common, was while the ship was in peacetime transit. The ship went up to Condition Three in case of a jump, just to ensure that everyone was prepared. Condition Two meant they were under threat, and everyone had to report to battle stations. Condition One meant they were actually under attack…or about to start one. Nino could count on one hand the number of times he’d flown under a Condition One alert. He hadn’t much liked it.

During a jump, the flight deck had to be clear of personnel in the unlikely event that the ship had to maneuver quickly upon arrival. Not with Sho-san jumping the ship, Nino thought. But of course, nobody wanted a Norimono to tip over onto them. The two pilots on Kit patrol had already come back inside a few minutes earlier since everyone knew a jump was imminent. As he and Ohno left the deck, heading for the locker rooms, a few dozen yellow jumpsuits followed right along with them. Nino was not looking forward to a Condition Three once they had civilians aboard. Someone was going to disobey, and someone was going to get hurt.

As senior members of the deck crew during this shift, he and Ohno split up when they arrived at the locker rooms. There were the two ready rooms for Kit and Nori pilots on duty, and Upstart was responsible for them. Ohno stood at the entrance to one of the ladies’ locker rooms, Crewman Specialist Yoshitaka at the other. Nino was responsible for one of the men’s and Chief Okada the other.

As the clock counted down near the assignment board, Nino waited in the doorway as several crew members filed past him to wait inside for the jump. He saw Yamada coming along, walking slowly.

“Yama-chan, let’s go. I want to lock up!” Nino called out.

Yamada waved, hurrying a little. It was only then that Nino realized Yamada was coming back with a sim-child strapped to his back. Nino’s stomach dropped as Yamada passed him, turning the backpack around to cradle the fake baby in his arms.

They were three minutes from the jump now, and Nino had fucked up. Pulling his parenting tablet from his tool belt, he groaned aloud. “Son of a bitch,” he said, seeing that the thing was going off.

The backpack…the backpack with Shota inside…was resting comfortably inside Nori number 9. It was impossible for Nino to run there, open the shuttle, grab Shota, and make it back to the locker room before the jump.

_It’s time to feed SHOTA!_

Nino angrily checked the box with his finger, shoving the tablet back in his tool belt. Two more crew members raced into the locker room as they hit the two minute warning.

Lieutenant Aiba’s voice echoed throughout the deck once more. “Action stations, action stations. We are at Condition Three. The clock is now at two minutes. All hands prepare for a jump.”

“Ninomiya!”

Nino turned, seeing Okada waving at him. “Go on and lock up!”

“Yes, sir!” Nino shouted, watching the chief go into the locker room. 

Nino took one last glance out at the massive flight deck. Shota would be fine inside the shuttle. At least Nino hadn’t left the backpack on the deck. According to the tablet, he’d just fed the baby so he was up to date there but…

Ugh, he was such an idiot.

He had a job to do, so he scanned the deck for any more crew. Finding none, he entered the locker room and closed the door, entering the code to lock it up tight. He did a quick headcount, moving from aisle to aisle. All the male crew he was responsible for were present, most of them sitting down on the locker room benches, joking around or chatting with one another.

Only Nino was in a spiral of panic. Twenty decks up, Sakurai Sho was getting ready for his big moment. The most stressful part of his job, turning that special key in his navigation console that told the FTL drive to work its engineering magic. In one second they’d be here in the Kuiper Belt, the next they’d be somewhere just outside of Jupiter’s orbit.

And while that was happening, their rice baby was all alone in a locked-down Norimono, zipped up in a backpack. If Nino couldn’t even keep track of a sack of rice, what was he good for? Then again, Nino thought, trying to come back down from the height of his panic, if it was a real child, it wouldn’t be here on the flight deck with him anyhow.

Aiba’s voice came over the speaker again, announcing that the clock was at one minute. Then again at thirty seconds.

Nino had a seat on the bench, rubbing his face with his hands, embarrassed over how guilty he felt. He tugged the parenting tablet back out of his belt, staring at it. Since he’d just taken care of Shota’s feeding, the normal status was showing on the tablet’s screen.

_SHOTA: All parameters normal._

Aiba began the ten second countdown, and Nino couldn’t do anything but stare at the screen. All parameters normal. All parameters normal.

He felt the usual tickle in his throat, swallowing hard. Jumping gave some people nausea. Others had it even worse, getting a headache or vertigo. Nino had jumped enough that he didn’t get more than that tickle. He hoped Sickbay was ready for all the civilians who would probably be jumping for the very first time.

It was over in an instant, the only indication that they’d jumped clear across space being the clock on the locker room wall. It shut off and then came back on. Nino heard a few groans around him, most from the newbies, but otherwise he didn’t hear anything worse. Sho had done his job perfectly.

He checked the tablet again.

_SHOTA: All parameters normal._

He got to his feet, shoving the tablet back into his tool belt. The other men got up, following him to the door. Nino unlocked it, holding it open and doing another count as everyone exited and headed back to work. He could barely stand still, holding the door and waiting for Okada to emerge. He held his thumb up, giving the all clear, and finally Okada acknowledged him.

Nino took off, not running since it wasn’t allowed on the flight deck, but hurrying as best he could back to Nori 9. He eventually heard Ohno behind him.

“Nino! Hey Nino, slow down!”

He made it all the way to berth 9 without slowing, gasping for breath when he reached it and activating the hatch. He rushed inside, finding that the backpack was just where he’d left it, sitting on the pilot’s seat. He hoisted Shota out of the bag, not finding any problems. Or more like the bag didn’t have a hole in it, and Shota wasn’t leaking rice all over the cockpit. Relieved, he buried his face in the silver fabric, letting out a cry of happiness.

He heard laughter behind him, turning to find Ohno leaning against the doorframe, smiling at him.

“I don’t know if this makes you a good father or a terrible one,” Ohno teased.

—

Sho found him sitting outside Lieutenant Commander Matsushima’s offices, his arms wrapped protectively around Shota.

Sho sat down in the chair next to him, his face offering no judgment. They sat quietly for a few moments side by side, even though Nino could tell that Sho wanted to say something.

Finally, Nino spoke up, waiting for a crew member to walk past them down the corridor.

“So they said there’s nothing wrong,” Nino admitted quietly, adjusting the bag of rice on his lap. “The jump didn’t do anything weird to the sensors or anything.”

“I see,” Sho replied. “Good.”

“I called you away from something,” Nino continued, so embarrassed he could barely speak.

“It’s okay. It was just dinner with Aiba-kun,” Sho said. “We pushed it back an hour.” Sho’s voice was not as teasing as Nino thought it could be. “I didn’t tell him, if you’re wondering. He can’t be trusted with a secret, that guy.”

Nino smiled weakly, glad that he wasn’t in hysterics. After his shift ended, Nino had gone straight from the flight deck to the Counseling Offices, asking one of the staff to examine Shota for damage. He’d fibbed a little, saying that he’d accidentally dropped the bag of rice during the jump. The staff member had given the all clear, examining Shota’s sensors and informing Nino that Shota was just fine.

But he’d told Sho the truth. He’d told Sho the truth in exhaustive detail. He’d used the parenting tablet’s private messaging function to send Sho a long message of apology, explaining the mishap on the flight deck, leaving Shota behind, jeopardizing the assignment, doing something so foolish. Sho had been busy holding the lives of hundreds of crew members in his hands, and Nino hadn’t even been able to keep his eye on a backpack.

Sho had only replied to say that he’d meet him right then and there, to wait outside the Counseling Offices for him. And now he was here without a single complaint.

“You did a good job today,” Nino said. “With the jump. We didn’t end up in the planet’s core or anything.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be stuck inside Jupiter.”

“You said it would be a difficult jump. Was it?”

Sho shrugged. “I’ve had harder assignments. Lucky for us, there were some freighters from ExoBrazil who canceled their flights. It was one of my backup jumps that I plotted last night, snagging the tail end of their flight path and jumping where they’d have been. We’re actually two hours ahead of schedule because I was able to stick us there.”

“Congratulations. I don’t know too much about how all that works, Sho-san, but it sounds rather impressive.”

They were quiet again for a few seconds, listening to the normal ship sounds around them. Finally, Sho spoke again.

“Are you alright?”

Nino sighed. “I couldn’t even go four days without screwing up.”

“You didn’t screw up.” He looked over, saw that there was genuine concern in Sho’s eyes. “Nino, you didn’t screw up.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” he said, “but why do I care? That’s the strange part. It’s not a real baby. None of this is real, it’s just a stupid project designed to waste my time. So why did I care?”

Sho patted him on the shoulder gently. “Why don’t you go change? Come meet with me and Aiba-kun. Have dinner with us. Get your mind off of this.”

“You should be angrier than this, Sho-san.”

“If this were a real baby, then I’d have cause for concern about your parenting abilities. For now, let’s just call this a near miss and move on.”

Shota’s noisy chime went off, and Nino picked up the tablet from the chair beside him. Shota wanted to be fed.

“See?” Sho said, gesturing to the tablet with his finger. “Even Shota wants to come eat with me and Aiba-kun.”

Nino laughed quietly, tapping the screen. “I am usually a very calm and collected individual.”

“I think you are proving that Matsushima-sensei’s program does have its merits. Don’t worry. I won’t actually tell her that,” Sho promised.

Still a bit embarrassed, Nino let Sho take Shota with him, and Nino headed for his quarters. He met up with Sho and Lieutenant Aiba outside of deck 4’s fancy officers’ cafeteria. Though Nino presumed they were just taking food to go, seeing as how they’d brought an enlisted person with them, Aiba immediately wrapped an arm around Nino’s shoulders, rushing him through the door.

“You’re with us,” Aiba said, his voice loud and cheerful, nothing like the serious tones he’d used over the ship-wide comms earlier that day. “You’re with us, Ninomiya-san. They can’t turn you away.”

“You have to try the fried chicken here,” Sho said, towing Shota along. “It’s life-changing.”

“How come my cafeteria doesn’t have life-changing food?” Nino complained, following Sho and Aiba-kun to a booth in the rear corner. The pair of them earned salutes or hellos from most of the officers at the other tables and booths they passed. While Sho mostly offered a polite nod in reply, Aiba returned salutes and clapped people on the back. 

Nino was rather astonished that these two were friends.

They had a seat, and Sho settled Shota down between him and Nino. Aiba proudly declared that he would not have parenting duties until later that evening when his partner Kazama, a man who worked in the cargo bay, dropped “Magic” off.

“Just a moment,” Nino interrupted, looking at Aiba in confusion. “You and this guy named your sim-child Magic? That’s a name you give to a pet.”

Aiba shook his head, disagreeing. “No, no, it’s named for Magic Johnson. He was a basketball player.”

“Yeah, a thousand years ago,” Sho teased, grinning.

“It’s not a thousand!” Aiba protested, “it’s more like…seven…seven hundred…it’s not a thousand!”

Instead of arguing the point further, Aiba announced that he was going to grab “one of everything” from the cafeteria line so that Nino could try the many wonderful items the officers’ cafeteria had to offer.

Aiba headed off, a spring in his step, while Sho simply shook his head. “And you work with that guy on a daily basis?” Nino asked.

Sho laughed. “He’s the best person on this ship, believe me. You will not find someone as fun to work with as Aiba-kun.”

“You don’t strike me as someone who is looking for fun in the workplace, Sho-san,” Nino teased. 

“What? I’m fun!”

Nino raised a hand to interrupt him. “No, no, you know I’m right. You’re the kind of guy who would remind the teacher that he’d forgotten to assign homework to the class. That’s who you are.”

“I am not!” Sho vowed, hitting the table playfully with his fist. “I am not that guy! I hated homework!”

“You’re a nerd,” Nino shot back. “The nerdiest of nerds. King Nerd!”

“I will have you removed from this cafeteria. For insulting a superior officer,” Sho complained, although his face was just as kind and happy as it had been all evening.

As the minutes went by, teasing Sho, being teased in return, Nino was able to forget his stupid mistake from earlier in the day. Soon enough Aiba returned with an overflowing tray of food, way more than was necessary to feed three men. Fried chicken, three types of salad, a bowl of ramen, chocolate cake, and a pair of rice bowls topped with grilled eel. 

“This is gross, Masaki,” Sho complained even as he snagged the plate of chocolate cake and set it down before him. He elbowed Nino. “You see this guy? He can eat just about anything, and nothing sticks to him. I eat one piece of chocolate cake and my face swells up like a balloon.”

“He gains all his weight in his face first,” Aiba informed Nino, pushing the plate of fried chicken to him. “And then I have to hear about it. About all the miles he has to run or all the weight he has to lift. You can go and get another salad, Sho-chan, if you’re so worried about your pretty face.”

Nino looked over, saw Sho’s affectionate scowl in return. Who were these two guys? Where was the guy who jumped the ship with ease? Where was the guy who called them to action stations with such authority? Nino had a bridge officer on either side, but they may as well have been two strange guys from his neighborhood back home, the guys who sat at the local ramen counter cracking jokes with the owner.

There was a lot Nino didn’t know about Sakurai Sho or Aiba Masaki, but as their meal went on, as Sho shoveled food into his mouth like it was the most important thing he’d do all day (jumping the ship, who cares?), as Aiba talked about Magic the bag of rice with odd affection, Nino realized how lucky he was to serve on the same ship. They weren’t just bridge officers with the fancy silver stars on their jackets. They were normal guys who held up under pressure, under the extraordinary things asked of them as senior officers.

Finally Sho dug into the cake, frosting smearing at the corners of his mouth. “Aiba-kun, would you tell Nino what happened to Magic yesterday?”

Aiba’s face flushed, and he set down his water glass. “Oi. Oi, don’t make me.”

“What?” Nino asked, looking between his two new strange friends. “What happened?”

“This guy,” Sho said, his tongue darting out quickly to lick at the corner of his mouth. It drew Nino’s attention in an instant, and he felt his heart race a little. Sho remained oblivious. “This guy brings Magic to the staff meeting yesterday. This was all senior officers, mind you. Bridge staff, chief of engineering, chief of medical…and of course, Matsushima-sensei was there…”

“Sho-chan, don’t tell him this!”

Nino’s curiosity was piqued. “What happened? Come on.”

Aiba sighed, sitting back in the booth. “Okay, okay. So I had Magic with me, right? Our main staff room is adjacent to the bridge. You don’t know the bridge, do you?”

“I know the basic schematics of the ship, I know where it is on the blueprints,” Nino offered.

“Okay, well the staff room is next door. It’s a long table, Captain Inohara sits at the head of it, we all sit around it, and I set Magic down on the floor at my feet. So the meeting starts, and I realize that the parent diary, the tablet that’s hooked up to Magic, I realize I’ve left it at my station on the bridge.”

Sho simply started laughing uncontrollably, barely able to hold his fork in his hand while he worked on the cake.

Aiba continued, not as embarrassed as Nino thought he could be. “So of course Magic starts screaming. Boop boop boop boop! Boop boop boop boop! And it’s right in the middle of Captain Inohara speaking. He’s a nice guy, Nino, he is, but like, I couldn’t shut it off. All I had was the stupid bag of rice. Boop boop boop boop! And you know it starts to get louder if you don’t shut it off right away.”

Nino nodded, shuddering at the reminder of his last two nights full of interrupted sleep thanks to Shota.

“By now, everyone at the officers’ table is looking at me like I’m a complete idiot because I…I’m you know, trying to muffle the sound…”

“By stepping on the bag with his boots, trying to find the sensor to muffle it!” Sho exclaimed, cackling.

“Oh my god, even Captain Inohara was losing his patience with me. Boop boop boop boop! And if I could do anything, I swear I’d have thrown Magic out the door, but you know Matsushima-sensei was right there. She was right across from me, looking at me with this face…she has this face, Nino…”

Sho had tears in his eyes, laughing so noisily that other tables were starting to look over, amused by their seniors.

“…she looked at me and I swear, all you could hear was the boop boop boop boop and Captain Inohara trying to think of some way to dismiss me. And then Matsushima-sensei says ‘Lieutenant Aiba, you’re being a very neglectful parent,’ in this tone of voice that makes me start laughing. Laughing in a senior staff meeting!”

Sho chimed in, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin. “So finally Captain Inohara says to him, ‘Aiba, go turn the damn thing off’, so off he runs!”

“Oh, I’ve never run so fast in my life!” Aiba complained, his face red with the memory of it. “I nearly tripped over my chair and nearly tripped over Ensign Inoo who was manning my station while I was gone. Poor guy thought we were about to jump up to Condition One, I looked so crazy. I managed to shut it off, and then I walked back to the staff room calmly, this time with my tablet.”

“And of course,” Sho interrupted, his eyes wet with joy.

“Of course as soon as I sat down…” Aiba complained, burying his face in his hands.

“Boop boop boop boop!” Sho exclaimed. “Boop boop boop boop!”

“I’m a terrible father!” Aiba moaned, laughing. “The absolute worst there is!”

Nino looked over, saw Sho looking at him with a smile. A smile that would have been incredibly handsome if not for the smear of chocolate on his two big front teeth. Nino nearly choked in laughter, turning his attentions back to Aiba, laughing at his story. Sho had brought up the story on purpose. Sho wanted Nino to feel better about what had happened with Shota. Even though he’d left Shota on the shuttle, at least he hadn’t managed to embarrass himself so completely in front of the ship’s senior staff, although Aiba didn’t seem too upset about it now.

Nino felt grateful, surprisingly grateful, for Sho. For not being mad at him, for letting him into a cafeteria he wouldn’t have otherwise been allowed to visit, for including him in a meal with his best friend.

He walked back to Sho’s quarters with him after dinner, Sho holding Shota protectively in his arms. In a few days they’d be back to Earth, and Nino’s own duties would increase. The Norimonos would be going back and forth down to Japan to pick up passengers, and the flight deck would be on high alert. Safety checks were paramount, and passengers would be escorted from the deck by staff from the security team. It was Nino’s job to help ensure that pathways were clear, that the shuttles were perfect. He’d slipped up with Shota today, but the next several days would be the real test of balancing his work and his “family”.

Sho opened his door, turning to Nino with a careful smile. “You’ll be okay?”

“Thanks. For what you did today…to help me out…especially when you didn’t have to. Thank you, Sho-san.” 

He knew he was blushing, and he didn’t much care. Sho was a good guy. Nino was fortunate to be partnered with him. But what was increasingly unfortunate was how much Nino was starting to like him. Brushing his teeth in a tank top and underwear, jumping the ship, scarfing down chocolate cake…he was seeing all sides to Sakurai Sho the last few days, and he was finding things to like about all of them.

Perhaps it was Project Papa-Mama. Perhaps it was the responsibility they shared, the bag of rice that was theirs to look after. Or perhaps it had been a long time since Nino had been with anyone, and Project Papa-Mama was an unfortunate reminder of his continued sex-free existence.

“You’re welcome in our cafeteria any time,” Sho said, his endearing smile tying Nino’s very full stomach in uncomfortable knots. “Although you have to be with one of us. I can’t change that rule, I’m afraid.”

“Our first family dinner,” Nino blurted out, wishing he’d sounded less serious about it. He saw a nervous little shift in Sho’s eyes, and he regretted saying anything at all. Sho had been really put off by Nino’s jokes about family and parenting before. He should have let it be.

But then Sho surprised him, hoisting Shota up until he had the bag resting on his shoulder. “You liked that, didn’t you, Shota? Dinner with that weird Uncle Masaki?”

The bag of rice remained silent, and Sho chuckled.

“I’ll drop him by you in the morning,” he said. “Good night, Nino. You did a good job today.”

“You jumped us to Jupiter today. I get to live to see tomorrow,” Nino teased, taking a step back before he said anything else strange. The last thing he needed to do was reveal his attraction and mess things up entirely.

“Happy to do my job and do it well,” Sho said, heading inside with Shota. “See you tomorrow.”

By the time Nino was back in his quarters, there was a private message from Sho blinking on his parenting tablet. He opened it to find a photograph of Shota, with Sho’s finger gesturing to a small brown spot on the silver bag.

“What a mess! Chocolate cake! Bad Papa!” Sho had written, and Nino let his fingers touch the screen, giggling like a fool at the sight of it.

—

The aft hatch on Norimono 43 opened, and Nino stood behind Ensign Koyama from the security team. He was a friendly guy, and this was Koyama’s third group of passengers for the day. Nino had been happy to let Koyama do all the talking.

Koyama headed up the ramp to begin his speech to the passengers aboard while Arimura up in the cockpit went through her usual post-flight checklist. Nino stood just outside the Nori, hoping he looked…welcoming. Chief Okada had given them all a heads up that it would be “nice” for the passengers to see friendly faces once they boarded the Suzaku. Ohno had asked to be switched to Kit duty because he “couldn’t make any promises” when it came to smiling while he worked. 

It was the second day in Earth orbit, the second day of the brand new Suzaku with civilians aboard. Koyama had already shared a bit of gossip with Nino. One woman had thrown a tantrum because her Passenger Access card denied her entry to the bridge. She’d wanted to shake hands with the famous Captain Inohara. And then two teen boys had already tried to hack the computer in their quarters to try and access pornography feeds from the Net.

Nino was very glad he wasn’t a member of the security team.

Koyama went through the basic rules aboard ship. No running in the corridors. Please feel free to use any facilities open to them with their Passenger Access cards. If they needed anything from their luggage in the cargo bay, please summon security for an escort. Though anyone boarding had been told to pack essentials with them to carry on board the Norimonos, there were already reports of people having stashed daily medications or all their clothes in the luggage brought to the cargo bays. 

Nino was also very glad he wasn’t a member of the cargo bay teams.

Another member of Koyama’s security team, Kato, approached. His stun pistol was holstered at his hip, and Nino had to envy his patience. Nino would have probably stunned half a dozen of the people who’d already come aboard that morning, the gawkers who wanted to put their hands all over the shuttles, the other flight deck equipment as they were escorted to the lifts.

“Got a batch here from Osaka,” Nino informed Kato while Koyama continued his laundry list of do’s and don’ts for the passengers about to board. “You’re from there, aren’t you, Kato-kun?”

Kato crinkled his nose. “Yep.”

Nino laughed. Kato was a quiet sort, a bit of a nerd. He’d probably joined JSA to find other…quiet sorts of people. “Best of luck,” Nino said as the boisterous group of passengers grabbed their luggage, slowly filing down the ramp behind Koyama.

“Welcome aboard,” Nino said, inclining his head politely to each of them. One middle-aged man had a video device, nearly smacking Nino in the face with it as he hurried to record the inside of the flight deck.

“Would you look at that?” the guy kept saying, waving his camera around. “Wow, would you look at that?”

Would you look where you’re going instead, Nino wanted to say, but held his tongue. He gave Kato a salute once the last passenger had departed 43, and Kato rolled his eyes, bringing up the rear. Nino watched the group head off, carry-on luggage in tow, Koyama shouting over the flight deck noise for everyone to stay together. 

Finally free to step aboard, Nino headed inside, strolling up the aisle. From the various JSA shuttle launch sites in Japan it took about an hour to leave the planet and rendezvous with the Suzaku in orbit, then another few minutes to be cleared for entry onto the flight deck.

Nino shook his head, laughing at the mess they’d left behind. This flight up from the Osaka shuttle site had lasted maybe 70 minutes, but the Nori’s aisles were littered with empty drink containers, plastic wrap, empty snack bags that had been sold down on Earth. Nino tugged out and unrolled a garbage bag from inside his tool belt.

Arimura emerged from the cockpit, leaving the door ajar so Nino could go in and make his final checks. She’d be doing another run down to Earth in two hours for another batch of 20 passengers, provided the Nori was fully cleaned and cleared for departure.

“Bunch of slobs!” Arimura complained, bending down to pick up some trash and shoving it in Nino’s bag. “I can’t believe they’re making you do the clean up.”

Nino grinned. “I’d rather pick up their garbage than have to fly them up here.”

Arimura shook her head. “You know they installed those emergency buttons in each aisle?” Nino nodded. If someone wasn’t feeling well, Arimura was able to unlock a medical kit in the passenger area from her seat in the cockpit. The thing would pop open, offering nausea pills, barf bags, all that good stuff. “This one guy was pressing it every three minutes asking me if we could stop so he could take pictures!”

“Perhaps I could…temporarily disable that button for you, Lieutenant,” Nino teased, shoving more trash in his bag.

“I wish you could,” Arimura lamented.

The airlock alarm went off. Another shuttle was coming aboard. Nino would be picking up trash for the rest of his JSA career at this rate.

He got 43 all cleaned up and performed his usual safety inspection once he had 43 looking good as new, calling over the fueling team to fill her up for her next run. He thumped the hull with his fist as he finished up, timed perfectly as Arimura returned from the pilots’ ready room.

By the time Arimura was cleared to fly, the shuttle lifting straight up from her berth and heading down the center of the flight deck toward the first set of airlock doors, Nino’s shift was just about over. He entered his notes, cleared some tool carts out of the way, and headed for the locker room.

He emerged, finding a man in a familiar black flight suit emerging from the pilots’ ready room.

“Mr. Perfect!” he called out, seeing Jun turn around and wait for him to catch up.

“Mr. Mechanic,” Jun teased him, unzipping his jacket, running a hand through his dark hair. Nino decided not to comment on the usual mess Jun’s helmet had made of his hair while he was flying in his Kit. He could be a little vain about it.

“Just coming off?”

“And not a moment too soon,” Jun said as they headed for the lifts. “Lot of traffic out there.”

Nino wasn’t surprised. The Suzaku was in steady orbit of the Earth, its shuttles heading to and from the planet. And then like always, two Kits were on patrol. While they usually flew alongside the Suzaku or scouted ahead for trouble, in orbit they had to fly a bit closer simply because the Suzaku wasn’t the only ship in the neighborhood.

Ships from dozens of countries were heading to and from bases on the Moon, on Mars. To and from space stations in Earth’s orbit. And then there were the private contractors, the civilian-operated ships that had to find a way up and out as well. It was a real balancing act, Sho had been saying the other night when Nino had dropped Shota off. While Japanese ships were fairly good about communicating flight paths, about sticking to schedules, other countries weren’t. Near collisions were a constant possibility. Nino had faith in his Nori pilots, in people like Jun, but you couldn’t always trust anyone else.

“Big plans tonight?” Nino asked.

Jun looked at him oddly. “Since when do you care about my plans?”

Nino laughed. Since most of Jun’s off-duty plans revolved around exercise or tending to the bonsai he’d been caring for since one of his flight school instructors had given it to him, Nino had long since stopped asking. “I spent half my day cleaning trash out of shuttles, Jun-kun. Humor me.”

“Soccer practice,” he said, “then I’m picking up my daughter.”

Jun’s partner, a cook in one of the enlisted cafeterias, was always spilling stuff on their sim-child. Jun bitched about it at every opportunity. “Soy sauce! She managed to get a big streak of soy sauce right down Momo’s back!” “She handed her back covered in powdered sugar! What is happening in that kitchen?” Nino was surprised Jun hadn’t petitioned for a partner change yet.

“Soccer practice?” Nino asked.

“Deck 7,” Jun replied. “I’m on an officers’ team. We usually play on the bigger field on 12, but we know it’s gonna be swarming with civilians.”

Nino’s long-standing lack of curiosity about Jun’s private life had suddenly changed. “Is Sakurai-san on your team?”

“Sho-san? Yeah, why? You know him?”

Nino unzipped his jumpsuit when the lift doors finally opened, allowing them to board. “Yeah,” Nino said quietly, “yeah, I know him.”

Jun laughed. “He doesn’t seem like your type.”

Nino looked away, a little embarrassed. He forgot that someone like Jun, obsessed with tiny details, would see through him so quickly. “You don’t know anything about my type, Matsumoto.” 

And now he’d regretted bringing it up entirely. At least he could trust that Jun wouldn’t say anything to Sho. Jun liked to consider himself “above” such trashy gossip.

“He’s just my partner,” Nino said. “Project Papa-Mama.”

“Of course. We’ll be starting in about an hour,” Jun said as the lift doors opened to deck 8. “I’ll be looking for you. I’m sure Sho-san will be too.”

Nino stuck out his tongue childishly and exited the lift, shaking his head. His secret was out.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been there on the calendar, that Sho was having soccer practice that night. As scheduled, Nino changed out of his jumpsuit and headed up to deck 4, finding Sho was getting ready to head out.

He greeted Nino at the door in a pair of black shorts and a short-sleeved green jersey. “Flyboys,” his jersey said in black letters, with an ancient-looking airplane beneath it. The informal soccer league apparently had team names. And custom-made jerseys. Sho’s hair was pushed back from his face, held in place with a black sweatband. His forehead was rather broad, and he looked a lot more like his father, at least in the photos Nino had seen. He left Nino in his sitting room while he headed to his bedroom to find a pair of cleats.

“Flyboys?”

Sho laughed. “Most of us are certified pilots. Kit or Nori flyers or officers who started out in a cockpit. They let me join because navigation’s…close enough.”

“And heaven forbid you play for a team that’s not top brass.”

“I’ll have you know, Ninomiya, that the Deck Devils are a really good team. I would have played for them no questions asked if they had a spot open.”

“The Deck Devils?” Nino scoffed, moving to retrieve Shota from the loveseat where Sho had left him.

“Flight deck guys, they talk trash like you wouldn’t believe.”

Sho checked his quarters to make sure he had everything he needed.

“I can drop by before first shift in the morning to come get him,” Sho said, “Shota was actually well-behaved today, believe it or not.”

“Actually…” Nino said, wondering why he was even asking. He’d never been into soccer. Give him a broken-in glove, the solid power of a bat in his hands. Baseball was above and beyond better. And yet…

“Actually?” Sho asked, oblivious to Nino’s distress.

“Actually I’m not doing anything tonight, so I thought maybe I could come watch. Me and Shota, I mean,” Nino said. When Sho’s face perked up, more curious than annoyed, Nino kept blabbing. “Lieutenant Matsumoto, he’s on your team, yes? We’re friends. We served on the Hakutaka together.”

“Oh,” Sho replied, and Nino wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. “Oh, Matsumoto. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We do drills for an hour, then just have a friendly match. It’s not the most exciting thing…”

“Well there’s civilians wandering all over deck 8. Already had security going around telling kids not to buzz the doors of the crew quarters so it’s a bit of a mess right now…”

Sho nodded. “That sucks. Yeah, yeah, definitely come along.”

And so Nino found himself sitting on a bench in the small park at the center of deck 7. It wasn’t much more than a couple fields of astroturf, a few plastic orange cones standing in for the goal. The blue-painted ceiling and bright lighting tried to give the massive room the feeling of a real outdoor park back on Earth. It succeeded to a certain extent.

Tonight the Flyboys were taking on a team made up from the cleaning crew, who’d named themselves the Bulldogs. It turned out that the Flyboys were not as gender-specific as the name implied, since the team was half men, half women. The Flight Commander herself, Eikura-san, was standing near Jun, the two of them stretching and chatting with one another.

“Fly People didn’t look as cool on the jersey. The ladies were very understanding,” Sho admitted, leaving Nino alone to head over to greet his teammates.

Nino sat there with Shota beside him, keeping the parenting tablet in hand. The last thing he wanted to do was interrupt their practice by not attending to Shota right away. There were a couple people in off-duty clothes sitting on the Bulldogs’ side of the field, their own sim-children in tow. So at least Nino wasn’t the only one lurking around, cheering on their partners from Project Papa-Mama. Though he supposed he might have been the only one with ulterior motives.

He caught Matsumoto’s eye from across the field, watched as he jogged behind Sho while the teams did some running to warm up. Nino hoped that the look he was sending back in Jun’s direction was a scary one. A “don’t you dare tell him anything” kind of look. Then there was some good old-fashioned stretching, and Nino focused on breathing, watching the players sitting on the turf, legs spread and stretching their muscles.

Finally after a few practice kicks, some dribbling, the match was underway. Some ensign Nino didn’t recognize, a woman with a noisy whistle, was serving as the referee. Shota alerted Nino a few times during the first half of the match, a whining demand for feeding and a bath that he hurriedly silenced. If he had a real kid, this wouldn’t be as easy as pressing a button, he knew that much.

Nino didn’t know too much about soccer, and watching the friendly match wasn’t really making him like it any more than he had before. It was a lot of running back and forth while nothing happened. The Bulldogs scored a goal, then the Flyboys scored the next two. Jun seemed to be in a defensive position while Sho was on the offensive side with Eikura. Beyond that, Nino didn’t know much about what was happening.

When the ensign blew the whistle to announce the halfway point, Sho came jogging over. His skin glistened with sweat, but he didn’t seem as exhausted from all that running as Nino would have been.

“Told you it wasn’t very exciting,” Sho said, grabbing a towel from the bag he’d brought along and left at Nino’s side. He wiped his face and his neck before sitting down. “You don’t have to stay if you’re bored.”

“I’m not bored,” Nino said. Just because he didn’t like soccer didn’t mean he didn’t like watching Sho run. He was quick, setting up several passes for other team members. It was a pass from Sho each time one of his teammates had scored. He was fun to watch.

Sho rested the towel around his neck, holding onto it at each end. His shorts had ridden up a little when he’d sat down, the fabric resting midway up his thighs. Nino looked away, fumbling with his tablet.

“Your son likes to watch you,” Nino joked.

“Me? I’m pretty average. My brother’s the athlete in our family.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he’s really into rugby. That was always a bit too tough for me. Those guys don’t mess around.”

“You’re tough in other ways, I’m sure.” He set down the tablet, watching the other players mingle around, chatting with one another. Only Sho had come over this way. “Your brother still play? I’ve never watched rugby before.”

“He attends the JSA Academy. He plays for one of the club teams, but he’s graduating this year, so he’s busy as hell.”

“Another Chief Navigator in the making?”

“God no,” Sho laughed, though Nino wasn’t quite sure why that was so funny. “No, Shu’s more like you. He’s in the engineering track.”

Nino was puzzled. “And how is that like me? I’m not an engineer.” And he definitely hadn’t been to the academy. You had to be near-genius level to get in, at least if you aimed for the command track someday. And both Sho and his brother had attended? Then again, it made sense if their mother was an instructor there, if their father worked for JSA. A family of geniuses, Nino suspected.

“He likes to know how things work,” Sho explained, digging his toe against the fake turf. “With you, it’s the shuttles. For Shu, it’s engines and the guts of a ship. After I decided I was going the nav route, he got obsessed with FTL drives. It’s my fault he went engineering.”

“Your fault?”

Sho looked serious. “It’s dangerous, engineering. Fires down there, short circuits, lots of hazards.”

“We work in space,” Nino reminded him, jostling his shoulder. “All our jobs come with a bit of danger. Today could be the day gravity control goes offline. Or life support. Explosive decompression…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sho said, “but he’s my baby brother, you know? I changed his diapers.”

“Well then if your brother’s anything like me, Sho-san, I think he’ll be just fine. I’m very good at keeping out of trouble.”

Sho got to his feet, dropping his towel on top of his bag in time with the ensign’s whistle. “Somehow, I have a hard time believing that one, Nino.”

He left with one of his brilliant smiles, and Nino slouched in his seat, crumpling a bit under the weight of that smile. It was hopeless now, wasn’t it? Sho had just compared Nino to his _brother_ , saying how alike they were. These feelings…the feelings Nino was still adjusting to, they were going to stay one-sided, weren’t they?

He peeked over at Shota, smiling wistfully. “And that’s that, huh?”

He supposed it wasn’t so bad to be friends with a bridge officer though. Sho was a nice guy, a really good guy. Maybe when Project Papa-Mama was over, he’d be able to see Sho in a different light.

In the second half, Sho managed to score a goal to put the Flyboys further into the lead, and in celebration, he wrenched his jersey off, swinging it around his head. Some of the ladies on the field clapped and cheered him on. Nino stared across the field at his bare chest, at his abdomen, the muscles of his back moving while he swung his jersey.

He wasn’t going to be able to see Sho in a different light just yet.

While the Flyboys (and girls) celebrated their victory, Nino left quietly, hauling Shota off with him. 

Two more weeks of this project. And then what?

—

A week later, the Suzaku made it to the asteroid belt, Nori shuttles leaving hour by hour hauling Japanese civilians off to new work assignments. The Suzaku flew some distance away, the belt crowded with smaller work ships from the various mining colonies and stations operated by several countries. 

Nearly four hundred passengers had left at the Mars drop-off a few days earlier, and another four hundred men, women, and children were off for new lives here in the belt. Most were headed for Itokawa Station, JSA’s main presence in the asteroid belt. In two more days, the Suzaku was off to its final stop, New Hokkaido on Haumea, to dump off the remaining passengers.

From the asteroid belt, the Suzaku would fly halfway to Jupiter before the jump out to Haumea. It would be the first jump of the Suzaku with civilians aboard, and the pressure was clearly on. Most of the passengers traveling out to New Hokkaido had never been through a jump before. 

In addition to all the time Sho was spending plotting out the jump and at least a dozen alternates, the coordinates run over and over again in the astrometrics lab simulator, he was also leading information sessions with some of the medical staff from Sickbay, describing the basics of FTL travel while the doctor he was teamed with explained potential side effects. The Captain was so pleased with their efforts that he wanted Sho and the chief medical officer, Yonekura-sensei, to record the sessions to play on future assignments to save them time.

Nino was taking more overnights with Shota, his sleep interrupted again and again. He discovered, though, that Sho hadn’t gotten much sleep himself. One morning he wasn’t even in his quarters. He’d somehow fallen asleep while working in the quarters of Ensign Aragaki, a member of his navigation team. The woman had found Nino waiting in the corridor, had apologized and asked on Sho’s behalf if he could hold on to the sim-child a few more hours so Sho could rest. Since Aragaki herself outranked him, Nino had had little choice but to agree.

While he understood Sho’s predicament, Nino’s job hadn’t gotten any easier. The security team was patrolling the ship day and night, issuing warnings to kids in the corridors. Nino had gone in for a bath one evening only to find two young boys spraying each other with shower heads, their disinterested father lathering up beside them even though the baths were clearly marked for crew access only. And on the job, Nino and the other deck crew were cleaning shuttles, finding items left behind that had to be flown back to their owners, delaying departure times. He’d also added a new task to his skill set, scraping chewing gum off a Norimono’s hull.

On top of all that, on top of Sho working himself half to death and blowing off his Project Papa-Mama responsibilities, on top of Nino performing tasks that were not in his job description, Nino was trying to avoid Sho as much as possible, if only so he didn’t let his crush on him develop into anything more serious. 

The last few weeks he’d seen Sho every single day, passing Shota between them, comparing tablets to try and anticipate when Shota might next interrupt their lives. Though Sho had been rather mellow for a while, the time suck that was the Haumea jump had made him grouchy again. 

But where before Nino had taken it personally, he now had a better understanding of all the pressure Sho was under. Sho was only being short with him because he had fifty other things to get done that day. His time was precious. 

His time with Nino was often spent accomplishing other things. In the morning, he was usually only halfway dressed, brushing his teeth or shaving when Nino arrived to drop off or pick up Shota. In the afternoon, he was usually coming out of meetings in his perfectly-fitted uniform, standing in the corridor with his hands on his hips, giving out orders with firm authority. In the evenings, he was in the gym in a sleeveless tee and shorts, sweating and waving for Nino to just drop Shota next to his treadmill.

The more Nino knew he ought to avoid Sho, the more he wanted to be near him, to learn more about him. Sho was a black hole and Nino had gotten too close. Sho’s strong gravity was pulling him right on in.

He was heading for his quarters, having just had a bath and returning to find Aiba standing in the hallway with a bag of rice in his arms, Shota most likely. In the last week, Aiba and his partner had drawn a face on Magic, had even doodled a mohawk on his bag for some reason.

“I’m sorry, am I late?” Nino asked, hurrying to his door.

“No, I’m early,” Aiba said, though he was missing his usual cheerful smile.

Nino opened his door, holding out his arms. “I can take it from here. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

Aiba handed Shota over. “Actually, can I chat with you a minute?”

Nino’s quarters were a mess, but he simply shrugged, letting Aiba inside. Aiba didn’t seem all that concerned about the mess, having a seat in Nino’s chair while Nino sat on the bed, running a comb through his damp hair.

“Sho-chan had to run to the astrometrics lab again,” Aiba said in lieu of an apology. “One of the ensigns was plotting something for Haumea, and the simulator showed us crashing into Charon. Charon being one of Pluto’s…”

“Aiba-san, I know what Charon is,” Nino interrupted.

“Oh. Right. Well yeah, so he had to go off and check the guy’s calculations, figure out if it was a math thing or a problem with the simulator since Charon isn’t even close. So he’ll be there until…well, you know Sho-chan, he’ll be there until he has the answer he wants.”

Nino sighed. “Understood.” Sho was supposed to be taking Shota for the night, but Nino was starting to doubt it.

“Are you upset with him?”

“Huh?” Nino asked, his comb stuck in a small tangle of hair.

“With Sho-chan. He says you’ve been…quiet.”

“Well, I’m not very loud.”

Aiba shook his head. “You know what I mean. Sho-chan is worried you’re upset with him.”

“Of course I’m upset with him,” Nino said nervously, trying for a joking tone. He was surprised Sho had even noticed a change in him since he was always going in a million different directions, from one task to the next. “He’s slacking off on this very important Project Papa-Mama business.”

Aiba leaned back in Nino’s chair, face full of doubt. “He says you’ve stopped arguing with him.”

“And that’s _bad_?”

“He says you just go along with whatever he says so you can get away from him as fast as you can now.” Aiba looked at him with astonishing seriousness. “Is that true?”

“He’s busy. I’m trying to respect that.”

“I see.”

Nino watched the doubt remain in Aiba’s face. He and Sho were very close, it was obvious. When Sho was upset, Aiba was upset. 

“What do you want me to do, Aiba-san?” He leaned forward, staring back at him. “What do you want me to say?”

“Very few people have the guts to tell Sho-chan he’s being dumb. He has an entire team of navigators to work with, he doesn’t have to do everything himself. They’re there to help him, but he’s stubborn. And doing those trainings, taking on that extra responsibility, he could have had someone else do those too,” Aiba explained. “Sho-chan thinks that if he just stops and breathes for a few minutes, if he just takes a break that it’s going to ruin everything.”

“Ruin everything? What’s being ruined?”

Aiba’s smile was rather bittersweet. “He thinks he has to be a superman to be a captain someday. But he’s going to burn out if he doesn’t stop. I’ve worked with him for years, and he doesn’t listen to me. Not about things like that anyway. He always says ‘I’ll manage it, I’m managing just fine’ and I know he’s not. He takes on too much. He thinks it’s proving a point, juggling so many things.”

Nino looked away. He’d been so impressed by Sho, with his jam-packed schedule, with his ambition. Nino had almost felt lesser in comparison, since he felt that work was just work. His job was just a job. He did his work seriously, but he didn’t let it dominate his life.

“But since he met you…”

Nino perked up. “Me?”

“Yeah, you,” Aiba said. “That thing with the star charts, he told me about that. He came back to the bridge steaming mad, saying some punk crewman said he wasn’t following protocol. That that punk crewman told him he’d been wrong, neglectful in his duties. Nino, nobody ever talked to Sho-chan like that before. XO Nakai always says that Sho must be gunning for his job, but he’s only teasing when he says it. Nino, you’re honestly the only one.”

Embarrassed, Nino pushed his mouth against the inside of his arm, his words muffled. “I was mortified afterwards. I was incredibly rude to him…”

“No,” Aiba insisted. “No, you made him stop and think. Even if it was some simple work procedure, installing those charts, you made him stop. He needs someone like that. He needs someone to remind him that his way isn’t the only way. He needs someone to pull him back before he goes over the edge.”

Nino felt his face grow hot, the seriousness of what Aiba was saying. “Aiba-san, he’s a grown man.”

“Yeah, well I’m his friend, and I don’t want him to get hurt.”

He looked up, seeing the pleading expression in Aiba’s face. He was a kind person, a devoted friend. But Aiba seemed to think he wasn’t enough.

“You want me to argue with him?”

Aiba relaxed a little, chuckling gently. “I want you to tell him when he’s being an idiot. He listens to you.”

“He’s my superior officer.”

“He’s your partner.”

“For the next week! In a week Project Papa-Mama is over and done with. And then we’ll have no reason to be around each other…” He paused, seeing Aiba’s teasing grin. “Aiba-san?”

“Hmm?”

“I think you’re misunderstanding something here.” Oh god, had Jun talked to him? No, Jun would never. Did Jun even know Lieutenant Aiba? So that meant Aiba had figured it out on his own. When had Nino become so damn transparent?

Aiba got out of the chair, walking over with that same dumb grin on his face. “Am I?”

Nino got to his feet, avoiding Aiba and his meddling face. Weren’t there tasks a chief tactical officer could be doing right now instead of trying to play matchmaker for his best friend? Then again, having the best friend’s endorsement could only help him out…

What was he saying?!

“In a week he won’t be ‘Sho-san’ any longer, he’ll be Lieutenant Sakurai. Lieutenant Sakurai who is owed respect as my superior. So for the next week, if it’ll make you feel better, I will do my best to yell at him, complain because he is not losing as much sleep as me over a dumb bag of rice. He won’t burn out on the jump to Haumea because I’ll be verbally kicking his ass for other things. And then when that week is up…” He hesitated, his mouth feeling too dry. “…when that week is up, that’ll be the end of it. Of me getting him to…to stop and think.”

“Is that what you really want?” Aiba asked. He seemed to be enjoying himself now, so Nino headed straight for the door, opening it and gesturing for Aiba to leave.

“I don’t know what I want!” he complained, waving for Aiba to go.

And that was the truth. Nino did not know what he wanted. Well, sex with Sho would be a great way to cap off Project Papa-Mama. He couldn’t deny that any longer. After seeing him in various states of undress the last few weeks, Nino had been thinking about it a lot lately. Imagining what it might be like to get Sho to stop blabbing about jump calculations and just kiss him quiet. To find a few hours alone in Sho’s overpacked schedule to mess around, to learn if Sho was just as bossy in the bedroom as he was in all other things. To find out what might get someone like Sho to finally give in and lose control.

But a playful night together with Sho didn’t quite fit Nino’s usual requirements. Nino, who hated drama, didn’t fuck around with friends. Or superiors. Nino needed to be with people who’d be nothing to him the next day, merely someone to offer a nod or a smile in the corridor the next time they saw each other. He couldn’t do that with Sho. He couldn’t do that _to_ Sho.

After three weeks of Project Papa-Mama, he couldn’t reduce Sakurai Sho to a nod or a smile in the corridor. Nino had never wanted something serious before. He didn’t want the expectations that came along with it. Hooking up with Sho was a risky thing to contemplate. Sho wanted to be a captain, a ship’s captain for god’s sake. Sakurai Sho was the textbook definition of “too many expectations.” If they got together and the whole thing soured, Sho had the power to get Nino transferred. Nino could fuck up his entire livelihood, just by being with him.

Aiba stepped out into the hall, clearly on the side of “you have my blessing, take the risk.” Nino didn’t much like that a guy like that had the ability to fire weapons.

“He’ll be unbearable until after we jump,” Aiba said quietly, as though he was giving him a secret, free hint. “But he doesn’t have to be.”

“Thank you again, Aiba-san, I’ll bear that all in mind. But if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure that my son requires my full, undivided attention.”

The bag of rice remained irritatingly silent on the bed behind him.

Aiba patted his head, smiling in the most annoying fashion possible. “Whatever you say. See you later.”

Nino shut the door, heading for his parenting calendar. He was exhausted. He’d have Shota for the next two nights, with the morning of the third day already noted down as the day they were jumping to Haumea.

He opened the private messaging function, staring at the blinking cursor for what seemed like an eternity before he started to type.

_Sho-san, this isn’t working. I don’t care if you’re jumping us to Haumea blindfolded and with your hands tied behind your back, you’re taking Shota tomorrow night._

He pressed send, shutting his eyes and immediately wishing he could take it back. Instead of taking his usual path of least resistance, Nino found himself listening to Lieutenant Aiba. He hoped he wouldn’t live to regret it.

—

Sho hadn’t responded to his message.

Sho wasn’t even there come morning when Nino got to his quarters. He stood there feeling like an idiot in the middle of the deck 4 corridor, holding onto Shota, his parenting tablet shoved in the pocket of his yellow jumpsuit after his fifth attempt at ringing Sho’s buzzer.

Shota’s sensor had gone off nine times during the night, a brand new record. Apparently he’d been programmed with a cold, waking in the night all out of sorts. Nino had come precariously close to going down to the flight deck and finding something nice and sharp to split the bag open, let the rice spill all over. But because he wasn’t a crazy person, he’d simply rolled over in bed, smearing his finger across the glowing tablet screen and burying his face back in his pillow to muffle his screams of protest. He hoped that Lieutenant Commander Matsushima sent around a survey when Project Papa-Mama was done so he could explain in excruciating detail why he found it unnecessary for a bag of rice to have the sniffles.

Nino’s shift on the flight deck started in fifteen minutes, and he was just wasting time standing here waiting for someone who wasn’t even around. 

He stomped off, pressing his palm to the computer panel at the end of the hall. The computer acknowledged him. “Good morning, Petty Officer First Class, Crewman Specialist Ninomiya Kazunari.”

“It’s not a very good morning. Do me a favor, will ya?”

“Please input a request.”

He almost growled his response. “Please locate Lieutenant Sakurai Sho.”

Their dog tags doubled as a means of locating them anywhere aboard the ship or on property owned by JSA like a Kit or a Nori. Nino swore that if Sho was still inside his quarters sleeping through (or ignoring) his buzzing, he was going to use the cumbersome bag of rice to break down the door. Or at least he’d try. 

“Lieutenant Sakurai Sho is on the flight deck.”

“Why the fuck is he on the flight deck?” Nino shouted, seeing a pair of officers give him a dirty look as they passed.

The computer wasn’t having it either. “Please input a request.”

Nino took his hand away instead. He had his answer. He caught a lift down, finding Sho standing by the assignment board talking to Chief Okada. They shared a laugh, Okada slapping Sho cheerfully on the back. Well, at least they were having a good time.

He approached, trying to keep from tearing his superior officer a new asshole in front of the entire flight deck. Sho was on his turf now. “Good morning, Chief.” He took a breath before addressing Sho. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

“Nino, there you are,” Sho said, dark bags under his eyes, but a friendly smile on his face.

“Crewman Specialist, the Lieutenant has requested you for a top secret mission,” Okada said, sounding more amused than anything. Nino watched as Okada erased the ‘Ninomiya’ assignment on the board, replaced it with “1/2 shift, Kit 2 after lunch.”

“You’re taking my hours away?” Nino asked, hugging the rice bag against him in confusion.

“I’m giving your hours to Sho-kun. You’ll report back for a half-day schedule after lunch. You can poke around with Mr. Perfect’s Kit today, he drove someone to tears yesterday and I want that Kit cleared properly. He claims there’s a problem with his radar, so I’m not clearing him to fly until you take a look, Ninomiya.”

“Yes, sir,” he replied, looking between Sho and his superior. “Understood, sir.”

“Please follow me, Crewman Specialist,” Sho said, holding out his hand to lead Nino away.

Nino could only walk at his side, not wanting to cause a scene on the flight deck. He was well-respected here.

It wasn’t until they were inside the lift that Nino erupted. “What the fuck was that? You’re messing with my shift?”

Sho held up his hands apologetically. “Hey, slow down.”

“I won’t slow down,” he shot back. “You can’t come down and just…just take me off the job. Our positions have nothing to do with each other, and now my assignment is falling on someone else for the day. Sho, you can’t do stuff like this!”

Sho was still holding his hands up. “Just, will you listen?”

It was only then that Nino realized that Sho wasn’t in his duty uniform. He was in his off-duty clothes, his jacket unbuttoned, shirt untucked. “Why aren’t you on the bridge?”

“Ensign Aragaki is on the bridge for first shift. I gave it to her. I’m off today because the jump is tomorrow, that’s my focus for right now.”

The lift let them off at deck 12, and Nino followed Sho down the corridor, confused. 

“Then why are you pulling me off my job? What’s this top secret mission?”

Sho chuckled. “I told Okada we were in danger of failing Project Papa-Mama, that we had to meet and work on making up for it.”

“You lied.”

“It’s for Project Papa-Mama, I didn’t lie about that,” Sho said.

They stopped walking and Nino saw the nameplate beside the door. Astrometrics Lab.

“I don’t understand,” Nino said, voice barely above a whisper.

Sho pressed his palm to the panel beside the door. “Computer, authorize non-Nav personnel Ninomiya Kazunari to enter. Authority, Sakurai Sho.”

“Authorization granted,” the computer replied, indifferent.

Nino followed Sho inside, still holding Shota in his arms. No alarms went off, though Nino was fairly sure that he really had no business being in here. What was going on?

The room was maybe the size of Sho’s quarters, dark aside from the computer screens inside. There was a long work table in the center of the lab, its surface aglow from about a dozen different screens’ worth of data readouts and images. There were more screens around the room, bolted to the bulkheads. Each had a nameplate underneath. He walked along, reading each of them. JSA-409-Mercutio. JSA-409-Rosaline. JSA-409-Juliet.

“The telescopes,” Sho explained, standing on the other side of the central table, leaning against it. “We control them from in here, can point them wherever we want within reason. For our calculations. Or if you’re a nerd like me, for plain old stargazing. They’re each mounted to the hull of the ship.”

Nino ran his fingers over another nameplate. JSA-409-Benvolio.

“They’re all characters from _Romeo and Juliet_. When the Suzaku was first deployed years ago, it seems like the Chief Navigator was a fan. The star-crossed lovers theme. I guess it’s easier to tell someone to check Mercutio than to check JSA-409-A396.”

“I never read Shakespeare in school,” Nino admitted. 

Sho gestured to a group of chairs off in the corner. “If you want to set Shota down…”

Nino did so, although he still wasn’t sure why he was in the astrometrics lab. He crossed his arms, feeling rather out of place. He was in his flight deck jumpsuit. Even with dozens of washes, most of his jumpsuits were covered in stains from fuels, lubricants, oils from the deck. He was almost afraid to touch anything, knowing all the instruments had to be very sensitive.

“Are you having a meeting in here? Am I going to be in the way?”

Sho was looking at him with a teasing expression. “I was up until 3:30 double checking my team’s work. We have 20 viable jump scenarios for tomorrow.”

“You didn’t answer either of my questions.”

“Nino, nobody’s going to come in here.”

He froze, standing in the corner of the room. “You said this was about Project Papa-Mama.”

“It is,” Sho admitted, scratching nervously at the back of his neck. “I wanted to apologize to you, Nino. I know I haven’t been fulfilling my end of the agreement. I know all the changes on the flight deck have you all scrambling.”

Feeling it was safe enough to do so, Nino leaned back against the wall, grateful for the solid feeling of it behind him. “Yeah, exactly, which is why you snatching me away last minute from the deck when we’re so busy is pissing me off.”

“I thought we’ve been getting along,” Sho said, Nino hearing the slightest tremor in his voice, but he covered it well. “My behavior has been inexcusable, and I’m sorry for it. So I know it’s selfish of me to use my rank to pull you off your shift, I know that, but I just…I thought I owed you a proper apology.”

“I accept it,” he replied, “so can I go back to work? Why did you need to steal half my shift to apologize? Surely you could spend your free time more wisely. In the gym or getting more sleep…”

“I want a family someday,” Sho blurted out, cutting Nino off.

The only sound in the lab was the usual hum of the ship.

“I always have,” Sho continued, his focus apparently on one of the screens before him on the table. “Or at least that’s what I thought until this project started. I grew up more fortunate than most, I understand that, but it was hard…it was hard when my dad was away all the time. My grandparents helped look after us since Mom was busy too, but we all missed him. Sometimes it took days to get messages to him, sometimes it took months to get messages back. He missed birthdays. He never came to practices, to piano recitals. We were a JSA family, nobody judged us for it, but it was hard on us. It was hard on Mom.”

Nino wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but all he could do was listen to the wistful longing in Sho’s voice.

“So I told myself I’d do things differently. I’d balance things better. I’d get a good JSA assignment, but I’d also be married by 30, have a couple kids by 35. I’ve had Captain Inohara as a mentor the last few years, I’ve seen the way he’s managed to balance it all. Having his wife and kids aboard now, I’ve never seen him so happy. So I’ve gone all this time with those expectations, that I’d be able to do all of that. My job, a family. Well, I’m going to be 35 in January, and I can’t even make time for an imaginary child…”

“It would be different with a real kid, Sho-san, you know that,” Nino told him. “You can’t just push a button on a tablet to shut up a real kid. You’d adapt. Kids are easier to love too, compared to rice.”

“I want a family, but I’m not willing to put in the time. Not now anyway. Project Papa-Mama, it’s opened my eyes, Nino.” Sho looked up again, looking at him with heartbreaking sincerity. “I’m not ready, and I don’t know when I will be. All I can think about is my job. I’m selfish.”

Nino stepped forward, standing across the table from Sho, the warm glow from the screens casting shadows on his face. “But you still want that. You still want a family. Someday, right?”

“My dad, he was gone a lot, but he did the best he could. My dad’s job let me fly among the stars, visit places that most kids growing up in Tokyo could only dream about. If it hadn’t been for all those family trips, the four of us meeting up with Dad at some place in the middle, I’d have never fallen in love with navigating. I used to plot the courses at home, with my telescope and my computer. I’d find where Dad was, I’d learn about the space where he was. I’d learn about the places where we’d meet him again. I’d figure it all out myself.”

Sho’s lower lip trembled, and Nino’s heart broke for him.

“Family is everything to my dad. Family is everything to Captain Inohara. Even when it’s tough, they found a way.” Sho tearfully gestured to the corner where Shota was. “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get there?”

Sho, who in Nino’s eyes could accomplish just about anything, was falling apart. Sho, who always carried himself so confidently. This stupid, stupid project…Project Papa-Mama, Sho felt he’d failed it. And Nino suspected that Sho had never failed at anything in his life.

Nino wanted to tell a joke. He wanted to cheer Sho up. Because even though he could listen to Sho’s frustrations, could understand the type of life Sho had expected for himself, Nino had never wanted those things. And even though he didn’t, he didn’t believe that made him selfish. Nino always gave himself an out, the ability to change his mind if circumstances changed. One day he might want a family. Today he didn’t. In Nino’s mind, it was that simple. But telling someone as serious as Sho to wait for the right person to come along, to just live one day at a time? To not beat himself up for not living the exact same life as Captain Inohara? What good would that do? 

What Sho needed was a visit to the Counseling Offices. Those people had the answers, and if they didn’t, they at least were trained to help Sho cope with what was bothering him. Nino wasn’t trained for this. They really were different people, him and Sho. But Aiba had said Nino was different in a good way. Aiba had said that Nino could get Sho to at least stop and think, to consider other options.

“Sho-san, I don’t have an answer for that,” he said gently, trying not to let his resolve crumble at the sight of tears rolling down Sho’s face. “But what I do have is time. I have until lunch today if you want to talk. And then I have the rest of tonight. I know you’ve got the jump tomorrow. I know Project Papa-Mama is over soon. But I will make time for you. If you ever need to talk, about anything, about what’s pissing you off, about what’s making you happy, about nerdy star chart shit…even if I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, I’ll listen to you.”

Before Sho could answer, Shota interrupted with his four-note chime. Boop boop boop boop. Boop boop boop boop.

Sho rubbed his eyes, pulling his parenting tablet from his pocket.

“Custody’s still assigned to me,” Nino pointed out.

“Yeah, yeah I got it. I’ll switch it over,” Sho said, tapping his finger against the tablet. A few moments later Shota quieted down again.

Nino moved, grabbing two chairs from the corner of the room where he’d left Shota. He brought one to where he’d been standing, then brought another one around to where Sho was. He pressed a hand to Sho’s shoulder, pushing him into the chair before heading back around and having a seat himself.

“You decided to steal the entire first half of my shift today, Lieutenant.” Sho was wiping his eyes, seeming a bit ashamed about his outburst. Nino decided to continue the conversation first. “So since we’ve got time, I’ll tell you a little more about myself. I figure after three weeks of seeing my charming face daily that you’d be curious. Am I wrong?”

For the first time in several minutes, he saw the tiniest smile on Sho’s face.

“Of course, I’m never wrong,” he continued, leaning back in the chair and getting comfortable. “Shall I start with Ninomiya Kazunari, the early years, or just the JSA ones?”

“Anything,” Sho replied quietly. “Everything.”

“You got it, boss.”

So he started at the beginning.


	5. Chapter 5

The queue to return the sim-children stretched all the way down the corridor. Everyone had been sent an approximate time, a two-hour window to stop by, but it seemed that some partnerships were more eager than others to see Project Papa-Mama brought to a close. 

They’d left Haumea and the Kuiper Belt behind, were en route to Neptune One, the JSA’s main spacedock and fuel station orbiting the large ice giant. They would remain in spacedock for a week so the ship could fuel up, restock with food and supplies, and prepare for the next round of civilians. The passenger decks were to be cleaned from top to bottom, and Nino was thrilled for a short break. Once they left Neptune One, they would be bringing a handful of passengers along with them, jumping to some of the Saturn science stations for some more, and then another jump to Mars for a handful of “commuters” who were heading back home to Earth. There’d only be about two hundred civilians aboard for this return trip. 

Reports so far regarding the Suzaku’s new mission had been, in Captain Inohara’s words, “extremely promising.” JSA top brass had already opened up a new round of advertisements on Earth, offering civilian transport out past the solar system to any interested Japanese parties undertaking new assignments at the Hayabusa Alpha and Beta stations and even beyond them to the young colony of Hikari, known for the beauty of its domed city.

All of that was mostly background noise in Nino’s mind lately. The flight deck had its daily assignments, its daily expectations, and he’d met them head on. The rest of his time had been better spent than usual.

After their chat in the astrometrics lab, Sho had been grateful. Nino hadn’t pushed the issue, hadn’t done anything as foolish as offering his advice on what Sho ought to do with his life. He’d simply talked about himself. Stories from childhood, his parents, his sister and her husband. His niece Tomoko and his nephew Takeru and the Norimono models he’d bought for them in hopes of sparking a new generation of Ninomiya family mechanics.

Despite the jump to Haumea, despite Sho’s usual need to overcrowd his calendar, the last week of Project Papa-Mama had seen a change in him. He set his team to work on the Saturn and Mars jumps early, giving the younger officers more time to plot out various options instead of coming up with most of the ideas himself. Instead of one long night monitoring the _Romeo and Juliet_ telescopes, Sho had instead met Nino in the baseball simulator on deck 14. It wasn’t much more than a handful of batting cages and a 3-D pitching simulator, but they’d had fun, Sho swinging and missing and laughing at himself while telling Nino about all the crazy places he’d been in the solar system and beyond.

Nino had spent more time eating with Sho and Aiba, had been invited along to another soccer practice where Jun had made kissy faces behind Sho’s back, winking in Nino’s direction. Sho had come down to the enlisted decks, had joined him and Ohno for beers and a few rounds of darts in the 8-Ball Lounge.

Sakurai Sho was never going to one hundred percent relax, that much was obvious. But if Nino could get him to seventy percent for a few hours, perhaps even eighty, then maybe that was an achievement all its own. 

The thing tying them together, Project Papa-Mama, had finally and mercifully come to a close. One long month of fitful sleep, petty arguments, and priority shifting. Nino was relieved it was over. His attraction to Sho had grown rapidly with each passing day, much as the idea of it still worried him. But it was so easy to be around Sho, to tease him and talk with him. He wondered how things might change now, since they didn’t have as many excuses to meet. Since they didn’t have a bag of rice to hand back and forth multiple times a day.

He and Sho moved steadily ahead, ready to say goodbye to Shota. Lieutenant Matsushima had sent messages through that morning, noting that the top 10 duos with the highest “attentiveness” ranking would be offered prizes. Most suspected that the prizes would be free visits to one of the fancy restaurants or spas on Neptune One, considering the station was the Suzaku’s next stop. Nino wouldn’t mind a fancy massage, but he doubted that he and Sho were going to be winning any awards for their parenting prowess. 

They made it to the front of the line, and Sho set the bag down on the table. They also handed over their parenting tablets, though Nino had made sure to erase all their private messages from it first. The staff member scanned Shota one last time, offering them a teasing smile.

“We can cut the bags open and hand over the sensor, in case you want a memento from this project.” The staff member whispered her next remark. “Lieutenant Commander Matsushima didn’t even want hers.”

Sho held up a hand. “I’ll pass.”

“Same here,” Nino agreed, chuckling. Though he’d spent many hours wanting to rip the bag apart and fling Shota’s sensor out an airlock, he thought it would be in poor taste to cut the poor thing open now. He just hoped all the rice would go to a good cause, could feed someone in need. Would that be cannibalism though?

Freed of their extra responsibility, he and Sho headed for the lifts. They’d both been on first shift that day. Nino’s exciting evening plans so far involved catching up on a gaming tournament taking place on Mars that week. He wasn’t sure about Sho’s plans - the parenting calendar hadn’t been filled in after Shota’s departure from their lives.

He held out his hand, inclining his head. “Lieutenant Sakurai, it appears our mission is complete.”

Sho smiled, shaking his hand vigorously, patting him on the shoulder. “And not a minute too soon. I’m looking forward to sleeping through the night again.”

Nino took his hand back, trying to gather up the courage to ask Sho if he had any free time in the next few nights. To his surprise, Sho asked first.

“Do you…it’s nothing important,” Sho murmured, unable to look him in the eye, “I made something. Something to show you. It’s…it’s nothing…”

“Sakurai Sho arts and crafts?” Nino asked. “Have you joined a club on board?”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Sho said, laughing gently. “It’s a video. I’ve got it on the computer in my quarters. Just a silly little thing. I thought I could show it to you sometime. Or tonight. Or now. I…I don’t care…”

Nino raised an eyebrow, curiosity taking hold. Sho seemed as nervous as Nino felt. What had he even done?

“Now is fine…if that’s okay?”

“It is, it is,” Sho said, tugging on his uniform jacket, a habit of his that Nino had noticed recently. It made him straighten up a little, look more commanding.

He followed Sho to his quarters, and Sho directed him into the bedroom, had Nino sit down in his chair in front of his computer console. Sho brought up a video program.

“You’ll probably think this is stupid.”

“I’ll be sure and let you know if it is,” Nino teased, wondering what it could be. 

During one of their chats in the last week, Sho had spoken about some of the trips he’d taken, the ones with his family as well as various excursions he’d done on his own shore leaves from the fleet. He loved to take pictures and video during all of his trips, had shared a few of them with Nino already. Perhaps it was another of those videos.

“Full disclosure,” Sho said, “but I’m sending this to my grandmother. I send her videos like this all the time. About work and things. I can’t send her sensitive fleet information or anything, but she likes seeing me at work. She’s never been away from Earth so…so it means a lot to her. But before I send this, I thought I’d show it to you too.”

“Sure,” Nino answered, feeling rather honored to see something precious Sho had made especially for his grandmother.

Sho pressed play, and Nino sat back, covering his mouth a little at the adorable sight of Sho facing the camera. It looked like he’d just woken up, hadn’t bothered to brush his hair yet.

“Hi Grandma, it’s me! I wanted to tell you all about a special project we’ve had going aboard the Suzaku for the last month!”

Nino nearly snorted, listening to Sho explain Project Papa-Mama in the most glowing, complimentary terms. The things one does to make Grandma’s day.

Sho went on to hold up Shota for the camera, and then the video changed up a little. There was one clip of Sho waking in the middle of the night, turning on the camera and pointing it around the darkened room, finding Shota in the corner.

“You! You keep waking me up!” Video Sho declared. Sho’s language was considerably less colorful than Nino’s had often been in the same situation.

Sho then went on to show a few clips of him taking Shota around the ship. For the first time, Nino was able to see the bridge. Though Sho had done a bit of video editing, blurring out the data on any of the computer screens, Nino was able to see Shota set down on the floor beside Sho’s Navigation station on the bridge.

The bridge had a central control station, a long table similar to the one in the astrometrics lab, with numerous screens. Captain Inohara and XO Nakai were stationed there in the center of the bridge, talking and waving to Sho’s camera. This was apparently not the first time Sho had done a recording for his grandmother while on duty. Sho then provided an explanation of his station and the helm station that flew the ship at sublight speed just beside him. Across the way was the tactical station where Aiba was, waving cheerfully and shouting “Hi Sho-chan’s Grandma!”

After a few more explanations about the bridge crew, the video cut to Sho and Aiba having dinner in the officers’ cafeteria, Magic and Shota sitting between them with the camera set down on the table across from them.

“Two men at dinner with their bag of rice babies,” Aiba was teasing, working through a heaping plate of fried chicken. “Is this what we went to the academy for?”

“Masaki, why don’t you tell Grandma a bit more about your sim-child?”

Sho then leaned over, fast forwarding through the video.

“He just talks and talks,” Sho said, sounding annoyed. “Grandma loves him. Sometimes I think she’d rather I just send a video of Aiba-kun to her.”

Nino chuckled. The video wasn’t stupid as Sho had told him. It was incredibly sweet. Another side to Sho that he wasn’t too embarrassed to let Nino see.

Sho let the video play again, but he grew quiet, moving to sit on the bed behind Nino.

Nino could only watch as Sho narrated another stretch of the video. He was up on the catwalk above the shuttle berths on the flight deck. Chief Okada must have given Sho the okay, but Nino was surprised when Sho started to talk about him.

“Grandma, I haven’t been working by myself to take care of Shota. Everyone on the ship was given a random partner. My partner for this project is Ninomiya Kazunari. He works here on the flight deck. It houses all of our shuttles, which transport people to and from our ship. He’s a mechanic, and he makes sure everything is running smoothly. It’s a tough job, and he works very hard.”

Nino felt his face grow warm, the video camera zooming in on one of the shuttles. Sho had videotaped him without him knowing it. He and Ohno were working on a tune-up of Nori 19, and he was able to see himself through Sho’s eyes for the very first time. He was able to see himself giving Ohno instructions, checking the hull for damage, waving over the fuel crew to get the Nori filled up. Sho must have taken this video just the other day.

The whole time, Sho’s narration continued. Other than their mutual breathing, it was the only sound audible in Sho’s quarters, the calm and steady tones of his voice as he spoke to his grandmother.

“He’s not just a skilled mechanic, but he’s become a very important person in my life. Next time maybe I’ll actually put him in the video, I think you’d like him very much. Kazunari is a very funny person. Maybe the funniest person I know. He’s quick and smart. I’m happy we’ve become friends.”

The video had zoomed in a little more. Nino could barely remember doing so, but he watched himself right there on the video. His hand was on the Norimono’s hull, rubbing with affection. He watched himself smile, absent-mindedly checking things off his work tablet while Ohno headed inside the Nori to do one last check. The video abruptly cut away from the flight deck and the location was back in Sho’s quarters. Sho was facing the camera, holding Shota in his lap, almost hugging him like a pillow.

He was sitting where Nino was sitting right now, in his chair at the computer. His eyes were large, open and honest. His smile was sincere, heartfelt.

He looked perfect.

“We’re fortunate to have someone like Kazunari on our ship. Sometimes it can be very hard to work in space. Sometimes it can be a little lonely. Some days are really busy, and with Project Papa-Mama, we’ve been busier than ever. At times, I even thought about complaining. I even thought about quitting, asking for time off from the project. But if you see the way Kazunari is with the shuttles, I told myself ‘Sho, you can’t give up. He’s found a way to do it. He’s found a way to get it all done.’ Even in the last month when it’s been hard, I’ve had Kazunari by my side, encouraging me, helping me. Even when I didn’t deserve it, he’s been so kind. Grandma, you’d really, really like him and…”

Nino moved his hand forward, stopping the video.

He could hear Sho breathing behind him, a slightly unsteady sound.

Nino took a deep breath of his own, leaving the video paused. “Permission to speak with you off the record, Lieutenant?”

Sho’s voice was mostly a rasping whisper. “Granted…”

“If I turn around in this chair, what’s going to happen?”

The silence in Sho’s quarters made Nino’s heart pound. Nino usually preferred to get straight to the point. But with Sho…with Sho he somehow couldn’t manage it. It had never been like this with anyone else. 

“That depends.”

All this time, Nino had been struggling, fighting his attraction. Maybe all this time, Sho had been feeling the same way. Everything about it was a huge risk, but the video to Grandma didn’t lie. He could hear it in Sho’s voice. Each “Kazunari” he’d heard in the video had shaken him, the sound of his name on Sho’s tongue sending a wave of heat through him.

All he had to do was turn around. Turn around, give in. Look into Sho’s eyes and see if he’d read the situation correctly.

“That depends?” he somehow managed to repeat back, catching the barest outline of Sho reflected in the computer screen, the shape of him behind him, still sitting on the bed.

Waiting.

“That depends on what, Lieutenant?”

“The astrometrics lab,” Sho mumbled, “I…I brought you there to talk. I couldn’t get my words out. At least not the ones I’d really meant to say.”

Instead Sho had spoken of his failures, with Project Papa-Mama. With wanting to fulfill the goals he’d set for himself, a career and family. Nino swallowed hard, realizing he wasn’t alone in this fear, this uncertainty. Sho had been meaning to confess his attraction. Hadn’t he?

Nino looked at the shape of Sho behind him again, his slumped posture. A clear contrast from the confident Sho who was actually on the screen, paused midway through a sincere message for his grandmother.

“When did you first realize it?” he asked, staying still in the chair, unable to move. Unable to turn.

“When we jumped to Jupiter. When you brought Shota in for the…check-up or whatever it was. It was just so…I don’t know. Cute doesn’t seem to cover the whole of it.” Sho’s quiet laughter was pure warmth, wrapping around Nino as gently as a blanket. “Or maybe it was earlier than that. One day I just…”

Nino interrupted him, as he’d grown so fond of doing. He turned in Sho’s chair, barely registering the surprise in Sho’s face as he got up, took the one step that he couldn’t take back.

He bridged the distance that remained, Sho’s legs moving instinctively apart as he allowed Nino to stand between them. He lifted his hands, and upon encountering no resistance, he held Sho’s round, boyish face between them. Sho sat there, still in his duty uniform, staring up at him. His eyes were dark, a mix between nervous hope and suppressed need.

He stroked his left thumb downward, brushing along Sho’s mouth. Sho’s eyes closed, his plump lower lip trembling at the contact.

Nino gave in, replacing his thumb with his mouth. He bent down, pressing his lips to Sho’s and praying he wouldn’t live to regret it. To help out, Sho straightened up a little, tilting his face up to meet Nino’s demands. Sho’s mouth was soft, warm, everything he’d wanted and yet nothing he’d expected.

Sho let him dictate the pace, sitting so obediently on the edge of his mattress, returning Nino’s kiss without pushing for more. Instead Sho brought his hands to the back of Nino’s thighs, a gentle pull against the fabric of his jumpsuit. Steadying him, unable to keep from touching him.

He stopped, taking his mouth away, standing up straight again and looking at Sho’s face in his hands. The grin Sho was wearing was one of encouragement. Nino had just kissed his superior officer, and god, he needed to do it again. He released him, taking a half-step back, letting Sho’s hands slide up the back of his thighs, over his ass, one warm palm pressing against his spine as he got to his feet.

Instead of bending down, now Nino had to look up. He brought his hand up to the back of Sho’s head, fingers tangling in his hair. Before he closed his eyes, he saw Sho smile. And then they were kissing again, figuring things out as they went along. Which way to move, to tilt their heads. He heard Sho chuckle when their noses bumped. 

Sho pulled him closer, letting out a soft little noise of pleasure that made Nino weak in the knees. It was so simple a thing, kissing someone, but it was _Sho_ he was kissing, Sho who was holding him tighter, Sho who was coaxing Nino’s lips apart to explore further with his tongue.

“Incoming audio call from Lieutenant Aiba Masaki.”

Sho moaned a complaint, and Nino let him go. But before he could step back, Sho was holding him tighter, pulling him back, demanding more. He definitely could get used to this side of Sakurai Sho.

“Incoming audio call from Lieutenant Aiba Masaki.” The computer wasn’t really reading the mood in the room, was it?

“I’ll kill him,” Sho whined.

Nino finally managed to detangle himself from Sho’s demanding hands, turning them both forcibly so he could shove Sho down into the chair at his desk. “It’s an audio call. He can’t see us.”

“I don’t have to answer! I outrank him, you know,” Sho protested.

“No, you don’t,” Nino shot back.

“I was made a Lieutenant before he was. So there.”

Nino moved to stand behind him, barely able to suppress his laughter. He could see Aiba’s ID photo had popped up on the computer screen, covering the lower corner of Sho’s precious video to Grandma. “Answer him, Sho-san.”

Sho cleared his throat, his right leg shaking nervously as he spoke. “Accept incoming audio call.”

“Hey! Sho-chan! Are we still on for dinner?”

Nino watched Sho’s shoulders slump, and he couldn’t keep from resting his hands there, squeezing gently. He was surprised, though, when Sho reached across his body, moving to grab Nino’s hand, their fingers intertwining. 

“Yeah,” Sho said, and Nino was surprised by how calm he sounded, even as his knee kept moving up and down, impatient. “Yeah, we’re still on, why?”

Aiba’s voice was a bit hesitant. “I just…in case you’re busy…”

Sho muted the call. “Am I?”

“Are you…?”

Sho turned slightly, looking up at him with a wicked twinkle in his eye. “Busy?”

“Go have dinner,” Nino ordered. Sho had made plans with Aiba, and even if he was whining about it now, Sho liked his schedules. Nino had at least discovered that much about him in the last month.

“Hey Sho-chan, are you still there?”

Sho unmuted it. “Yeah, I’ll see you. 1900 hours.”

“Okay great! Hi Nino, bye Nino!”

Aiba ended the call before Sho could, and Nino put his hand over his mouth, hiding a snicker as Sho turned bright red in embarrassment. Nino put his other hand to his chest, feeling the cold, familiar metal of his dog tag under his clothes. It wasn’t really true that Aiba couldn’t “see” them - running a check on their current location, any member of the crew could do that…

Project Papa-Mama was over. Anyone running a check at that exact moment would see that Crewman Specialist Ninomiya was in Sho’s quarters for no logical reason.

“Well that’s…” Sho mumbled, coming to the same realization. “…that’s not something I thought about.”

“Sho-san, we have a lot of things to think about.” Nino backed away, gathering all his willpower to keep from going any further with Sho. At least not today. “Enjoy your dinner.”

Sho turned in his chair, fluttering his fingers to say goodbye. “We have a lot of talking ahead of us, too, don’t we?”

Nino called back to him from the other room, pausing before pressing the button to open Sho’s door. “A lot of talking. And maybe…a lot of not talking.”

“I look forward to it.”

Me too, he thought without saying it aloud, turning and heading into the corridor, unable to hide his smile.

—

“God, you stink!” Nino complained as Sho pressed him against the wall of his quarters. 

Nino had somehow made it through another of the Flyboys’ soccer practices. Watching Sho run and run and run, all energy and athleticism, Nino had barely held it together. He’d almost pressed the emergency stop on the lift back up to deck 4, desperate to touch him, to kiss him. But they’d made it safely to Sho’s quarters without causing a scene. Nobody needed to catch a bridge officer humping a crewman in the corridor.

But now that they were back in Sho’s quarters, he was kind of wishing the Flyboys’ “Super Striker” (Sho’s words, not Nino’s) had hit the showers first.

“You complain and complain,” Sho replied, ignoring him and kissing all along his neck, those magic lips of his trailing heat with every brush of his mouth.

It was the first time they’d seen each other in person in four days. Between senior staff meetings, Sho’s departmental cross-training, his navigation team dinner, and his billion other commitments, they hadn’t been able to match schedules until now. Sho’s invite had come with conditions - that they “have a chat” about “the current situation” - but Nino wondered if they were going to get to that point at all.

While Sho focused on his current areas of interest, namely laying claim to Nino’s neck, the length of his jaw, Nino decided he’d just have to put up with Sho’s slick, sweaty skin. A hassle, to be sure.

He grabbed Sho’s ass through his shorts, hearing him sigh in reply just by his ear, squeezing possessively before moving up to his waistband and slipping his hand inside to touch the real deal. It was firm, tight, totally perfect.

“I noticed this right away,” Nino admitted, patting his ass affectionately.

Sho’s teeth nibbled gently on his earlobe. “Not my winning personality?”

“I still haven’t noticed that, if such a thing exists.”

Sho growled a little in protest, shutting Nino up with a kiss that stole his breath. He was stuck where he was, the wall behind him, Sho before him. They were both wearing too many clothes. Resigning himself to his trapped status, unwilling to let the opportunity go to waste, he pulled Sho closer still, grinding against him. He grinned against Sho’s mouth, finding that Sho was already hard.

“When’s the last time you fucked someone, Lieutenant?” Nino asked, pulling his mouth away to whisper in Sho’s ear. 

Sho reached behind himself and yanked Nino’s hand out of the back of his soccer shorts. “From the very first day,” he said, his voice low, almost predatory. “From the very first day, I’ve had to put up with the way you speak to me.”

Nino just stayed where he was, breathing heavily as Sho took a step back. He could tell that Sho liked it, liked the way Nino spoke to him, even when it bordered on disrespectful. “I would apologize, sir, but it wouldn’t be all that sincere.”

Sho laughed, standing there without shame, his erection still tenting his dark shorts a little even as they stood apart. “To answer your question, about a year. Maybe…eleven months, now that I think about it.”

“A year?” Nino exclaimed. He pointed at Sho, moving his finger up and down, up and down, pointing at his chest, his stomach, the outline of his cock in his shorts, gesturing at the whole of him. “Nobody’s gotten to enjoy any of that for a whole year?”

Sho rolled his eyes. “I’ve been working a lot.”

Nino shook his head. “Well, if you’d like me to help you break that eleven month streak, I would kindly ask you to wash up a little first.” He pointed once again to Sho’s slowly diminishing erection. “I watched you run yourself ragged on that field the whole night, Mr. Super Striker. Your probable ball sweat situation right now lessens my enthusiasm.”

“That is just about the unsexiest thing someone has ever said to me.”

“I’m a mechanic. When a Nori’s low on fuel, you fuel her up. You identify the problem or the current need and you fix it. I don’t really treat humans that differently. Your problem right now is that you stink. So hit the shower.” Nino moved, brushing shoulders with Sho as he walked past him, heading for the small bathroom. “I can help, if there’s enough room for me to join you. You bridge officers get all the perks, you must have a huge shower in here…”

Sho was quicker than he anticipated, grabbing him by the back of his off-duty jacket. “Nino.”

He turned, already expecting it. Sho looked a little embarrassed, and what he said next didn’t surprise Nino at all.

“We can’t sleep together.”

Nino leaned against the bathroom doorframe. “Because you outrank me.”

“Because all bridge officers are required to disclose personal relationships if they’re with other members of the crew. Your rank has nothing to do with it. _Mine_ does. I could be accused of favoritism if you get a promotion, any other privileges, anything based on my word. I have to disclose it, recuse myself if I’m asked to evaluate you or your work. I know we’re not in the same sort of positions aboard, but it is what it is. Standard procedure.”

Nino grinned, trying to stay calm. “Then disclose it tomorrow. I don’t see you being asked to evaluate my work in the next few hours. Well, not my work on the flight deck anyway…”

“Nino,” Sho said, a warning edge to his voice.

He wasn’t ready. God, he knew he wasn’t ready for what Sho wanted to say. Sho, who had a plan for his life. “Tonight…it doesn’t have to mean anything yet, Sho-san.”

Sho’s face had grown more serious. He leaned against his computer chair, holding on tight. “That’s just it though. Call me old-fashioned, call me boring, but I don’t do casual. It’s fine if you do, it really is, but I just…don’t.”

Nino said nothing, wishing he hadn’t pushed Sho in this direction so fast. They could have still been playing grab ass in the other room. He could have still been enjoying the wonder that was Sho’s mouth, sliding along his jaw.

“I haven’t had sex in eleven months because I haven’t been in a relationship in eleven months. For me, those two things go together. The person I was with, he left the fleet for a civilian job. We broke up, these things happen. But we’d been serious for over two years. That’s who I am, okay?”

“Okay…okay, I get what you…”

“What I’m saying is…” Sho could barely look at him. “What I’m saying is that I want more than just a casual thing with you. We haven’t known each other for very long, but I like you. I like you a lot and…”

“You want a family,” Nino said, feeling like a wall was being built between them, brick by brick.

Sho’s eyes widened. “I…Nino, that’s not what I said…”

“But Sho-san, it _is_ what you said. It’s what you said in the astrometrics lab. It’s what you’ve been aiming for. You’re not quite there yet, having work and having family, but it’s your dream. It’s your goal.” Nino put a hand to his heart, wishing this wasn’t how the evening was ending. “Sho-san, it’s your goal, but it’s not mine.”

“Nino…”

“I’ve known you for a month, I saw you every single day for a whole god damned month, and I like you. I like you so much, it kind of disgusts me.” Sho’s expression didn’t change, so he decided to drop the cute comments. “Family, I have never been aiming for that. Getting married, having kids someday. I’m not one hundred percent opposed to it, but then again, if you get to know me better, you’ll discover that I’m not one hundred percent opposed to a lot of things. I don’t shut a lot of doors for good, but I’m also slow to warm up to ideas that don’t interest me. Sho-san, you set rules and goals for yourself. It’s who you are. I don’t do that. I can’t do that. You’re looking for someone, the right someone, who is going to help get you where you want to be. And I’m not sure that person is me.”

Sho looked a little annoyed now. “I’m not asking you to marry me, for god’s sake.”

“But you _are_ asking me to put a word to what we have so that you can ‘disclose’ it properly. You want a definition, you want a firm rule, you want a standard procedure. You want to put me on the schedule that is Sakurai Sho’s life. You want to carve out a block for Kazunari the Relationship, you want something that you understand. I am not you. I do not operate the same way!”

“I wasn’t…I’m not asking…”

“But that’s where this will lead, isn’t it?” Nino stepped forward, resting his hand on Sho’s forearm, squeezing gently. “Isn’t it? Sho-san, I’m not mad at you. I’m just trying to be honest with you. I don’t want you to be hurt, and I don’t want you to misunderstand. I’ve never really done the dating thing. But if that’s what would make you happy, taking a step back and slowing things way down, that’s…that’s something I can probably do. I like you enough to sit through soccer, you know.”

Sho stayed rigidly still, his smile having long since vanished.

“I’m willing to try, I really am. I just…I’ve never been the type of guy anyone would want to…disclose.” He took his hand away, and it hurt more than he expected when Sho didn’t try to tug him back. “I want you to go into this with both eyes open. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Not for a certainty, which is why all I can do is try. I don’t promise, Sho-san. I just try. So think about what you really want and if I fit that criteria in the long run. Take your time. I’m a recent transfer to this ship, after all, so it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

When he met Sho’s eyes, he finally saw understanding. Not quite disappointment, which was what Nino had expected, but the look he received wasn’t altogether promising.

“Well,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “You know where to find me.”

“Yeah,” Sho mumbled.

Nino turned and walked away, leaving without another word. Sho had wanted to “have a chat.”

He’d gotten his wish.

—

He hopped down from the wing, boots hitting the deck hard.

“And was it the transponder?” Jun asked.

Nino held up the offending item, a shorted wire that he’d just replaced. This particular one had been part of Jun’s transponder, the device that told other ships that his vessel was friendly, not part of a pirate fleet. Nino doubted that anyone would confuse a JSA Kitsune for a hostile target, especially with the skills Jun had in the cockpit, but it had to be switched out regardless.

“I would have caught it anyway,” Nino said, pulling out his tablet.

“I know you would have,” Jun said, walking alongside him as Nino made his final checks. Jun just liked to be proactive. And Jun also liked to be right.

“Can you stand it, a week off?”

Once they docked at Neptune One, the Suzaku’s Kit pilots were largely off duty, save for an emergency rotation, one pilot suited up and waiting in the ready room if necessary. JSA had its own squadron of Kits to patrol the airspace around the station. Jun ran his hand along his Kit’s hull. “If I’m bored, I can get in the simulator. And in the simulator I can actually, you know, shoot stuff.”

It had been ages since Jun had gotten to see combat. The Kit pilots on the Suzaku were nothing more than glorified bodyguards, flying alongside, scouting ahead for trouble. Nino personally had no interest in getting into a situation that required the firing of any weaponry, nor did he much like the idea of anyone shooting at Jun. But he could still sympathize with Jun’s rather dull assignment. It was a new age for the JSA, a much more peaceful time.

“Your buddy was really annoying at practice last night,” Jun decided to remark, trying to get a reaction. “He was distracted. He couldn’t make one good shot so we finally just moved his ass to defense.”

They were one day out from docking at Neptune One, and Nino hadn’t seen or spoken to Sho in almost a week. Not since that disastrous night after Sho’s last soccer game. Nino had said what he’d needed to say, had been honest with Sho. It was really up to Sho if he wanted to pursue something.

A week’s silence had told Nino Sho’s answer pretty decisively.

“I don’t have a buddy,” Nino said, trying not to let his disappointment show as he worked his way down his checklist. After four long weeks of seeing Sho in some capacity every single day, his abrupt absence had left Nino feeling empty. Lonely.

“I’m sorry,” Jun teased, “I must need my vision checked. Because the last time you came for our practice, you and Sho-kun were eye fucking each other from across the field.”

Nino tightened his grip on his tablet. Sho had scored a goal in that game, pointing to Nino during his celebrations.

Jun kept running his mouth. “Haven’t known the guy very long, but he’d been playing a whole lot better since you came to watch. I just figured you couldn’t make it yesterday, so when I asked him if you were his good luck charm, he ignored me. And then when he played like complete shit, it made me curious.”

“Jun-kun,” Nino warned him, but Jun was in the mood to tease.

“Aww, what’s the matter? Trouble in paradise already?”

“Lieutenant Matsumoto, if you don’t have any other concerns about your Kit, then I’m going to need just one more minute, and I’ll clear you to fly.” He looked up, meeting Jun’s curious expression with what he hoped was a neutral one of his own. “Okay?”

Jun seemed shocked. Usually he was the one who wanted to cut down on the small talk, telling Nino to just shut up and clear him already. “Understood.”

Nino let Jun head off for the ready room, where he’d grab his flight helmet and any other gear he needed for his patrol. From there he’d board the Kitsune, flight deck crew wheeling the Kit over to one of the launch tubes. After his final pre-flight check, the tube would propel him out into space, away from meddling with Nino any further today.

Once Jun was out on his patrol, Nino’s shift was over. He cleaned up in the locker room, heading back to his quarters. Ohno had been trying to get him to meet him for darts the last several nights, but Nino had simply begged off, lying about some game on the Net that was occupying his time of late.

Instead he’d spent most of the last week sitting around, remembering how good it had felt to have Sho’s hands on him, how good it had been to kiss him. Wondering if Sho would ever contact him again. Hell, he’d even hoped that Aiba would intervene at some point, showing up for another “Sho-chan needs you” kind of pep talk. 

No calls, no messages. No Aiba.

He’d get over it, in time, the relationship that had floundered before it had even started. Because Nino was Nino and because Sho was Sho and they wanted different things. They did want different things, didn’t they? Nino had offered to try, to try his best to take things slowly, an offer he’d never felt like making before. Then again, nobody had ever _expected_ anything from him before. Nobody had ever thought about him as anything more than a fun time, a good lay, and Nino himself had perpetuated that image.

He’d never wanted anything too serious. Because he’d never wanted to get in too deep and then feel like he couldn’t back out.

He entered his quarters in a fog of confusion, the same fog that had surrounded him the last several days. When he’d told himself that it was all up to Sho. When he’d told himself that Sho deserved someone who could run with him to that distant goal. That goal where he was Captain Sakurai Sho with a ship to command and a family to love.

For the first time in more than a week, Nino thought about Shota, all those times he’d had Shota here overnight so that Sho could rest, so that Sho could jump the ship safely in the morning. The sacrifices Nino had made, even when it wasn’t really fair. He’d complained, but he’d done it just the same.

But that had been a nonsense project, a month-long experiment. Being with Sho in the long run, what would he have to sacrifice? And what would Sho be willing to compromise on in return?

He unlaced his boots, kicking them off. He unzipped his jumpsuit, tugged it off. By the time he came back from dinner, from his bath, there was a blinking message on his computer. He sat down, discovering that it was an audio message that Sho had left only minutes earlier.

He dreaded pressing play. Sho was a proper sort of person. Maybe he was officially letting Nino know it was best they didn’t see each other. Or maybe it was best they stay friends, though Nino wondered if that would even be possible after what had happened. But he couldn’t sit there wallowing in all the what ifs and maybes.

He leaned forward, playing back the message.

“Hey Nino, it’s me.”

Nino shut his eyes, realizing just how badly off he was, if the sound of Sho’s voice after a week felt so familiar, so comforting, no matter what he had to say.

“I’m sorry we left things where we did last week. You were honest and upfront with me, and I appreciated it. I really did, even though I couldn’t seem to respond to you. I have to admit that nobody’s ever really…nobody’s ever really been that honest with me. At least so early on. It’s easy to just jump in, let your heart do the driving and not your head. What you said about me, almost every word, it was true. About what my expectations are, in the long run, about what I’d have probably demanded and expected from you.”

He sat back in his chair, enjoying the surprising steadiness to Sho’s voice. 

“Until now, I’ve been a person who wanted a definitive answer. I’ve been a person who deals in certainties. For everything. A readout from a telescope. Entering jump coordinates in our simulator. Because in my job, I can’t fuck up. But just because that’s my job doesn’t mean I have to be that rigid or inflexible in my personal life. All these years, Nino, I told myself I can’t be with someone who isn’t on the exact same wavelength as me. And you know what, all that really means in the end is that what I’ve been looking for in a partner is a clone of myself. And that’s why I haven’t been able to get where I thought I’d be by this point in my life.”

He crossed his arms, hugging himself a little. He wished Sho was here, telling him this in person, but perhaps Sho didn’t yet have the courage to.

“Since we’ve met, you’ve been a person who challenges the way I think. You’ve helped me, more than I can even say. What I need to do is stop expecting the person I go out with to be the person I start a family with by a certain date. What I need to do is live a life that doesn’t have everything plotted ahead of time. With a jump we plot ahead of time, but we have alternatives. We have to have alternatives. And I think, Nino, that I have to give myself alternatives, too.”

He was a little embarrassed to feel tears rolling down his cheeks, listening to Sho speak so sincerely.

“I like you way too much to give up. I’m not going to be perfect, and I need you to remind me of that. You already said you’d be willing to try. No promises. Just that you’d try. And that’s more than enough. We dock at Neptune One tomorrow around 1100 hours. I know you’ll be on the flight deck for first shift. There’s a restaurant I like on the station, it’s on deck 3 over there. It’s called Star of the Sea King, they’ve got an all you can eat shellfish special…”

Nino couldn’t help laughing. Sho liked to eat.

“Once we dock, I’ll probably head over to the station right away, I’ve got a friend from the academy who works in engineering there. But I made a reservation for 2 at the restaurant at 1800 hours. If you’d like to come, that’s where I’ll be. So um…if you don’t come, there’s no hard feelings. You’ve said how you feel, and now I have too. Tomorrow, 1800 hours. Good night, Nino.”

The message ended, and Nino took a deep breath. He knew exactly where he’d be the following day at 1800 hours. There was no doubt in his mind.


	6. Chapter 6

They’d only been docked for two hours, but they were already working on a skeleton crew schedule. While the Suzaku was in dock, the Kits and Noris just needed daily checks, no need for round the clock checks. The ship’s engines were on passive power, only the systems needed for life support, gravity, and the basics of operation powered up while in dock. 

All non-essential personnel had a week of shore leave, though most came back aboard to sleep each night. While many of the lower-ranking deck crew were free to leave the ship for the duration, Nino was considered essential and had to work a shift every day during a long dock unless he’d scheduled personal shore leave as well. But he didn’t much mind. A visit to Neptune One wasn’t cheap, with its bevy of fancy restaurants, entertainments, and hotel suites. 

There was only one reason he needed to set foot off the Suzaku that week, and it was only a few hours away.

Okada had him and Ohno working their asses off today on docking day, if only so they could take it a bit easier during the long stretch at Neptune One. With no Kit patrols, no Nori shuttle runs, it was the perfect time to run checks on the flight deck’s massive dual airlocks, to inspect the Kits’ launch tubes for malfunctions. Nino had already walked the full length of five tubes that day, eyes open for any debris that might have fallen from a Kit, any gunk mucking up the tube that might cause a problem for a Kit launch down the line. He’d definitely earned his all you can eat shellfish and then some.

He emerged from his fifth tube, finding Ohno waiting for him, stretching from side to side. There may have been only six Kits aboard the Suzaku, but every bit of equipment had to stay functional. They each had two left to inspect for the day, other crew members handling the rest.

“Tired already, Ohno-san?” Nino asked.

Ohno sighed. He had plans that evening to visit an art exhibit being shown on Neptune One, works assembled from artists scattered across the JSA colonies on the outer planets and their moons, but he didn’t seem too excited to stay on his feet much longer.

“I always forget how long these tubes are,” he complained, scratching the back of his neck.

“Probably because it takes a Kit about two seconds to clear it.”

“Yeah, I know. Hey Nino, did you want to…”

The ship-wide klaxon started blaring. Without the usual activity on the flight deck, without the usual hum of the ship’s engines, it echoed noisily and made him and Ohno both jump. And then it was Aiba’s voice, calm but firm.

“Action stations, action stations. Set Condition Two throughout the ship. This is not a drill. Repeat. Action stations, action stations. Set Condition Two throughout the ship. This is a heads up. We’ve got a deadstick coming in, probable collision with Neptune One in less than 30 seconds. Shields are up, brace for impact.”

Nino had never been aboard a docked ship that jumped from Condition Five to Condition Two, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t trained for it. A “deadstick” ship meant that it had lost power and most often along with it, the ability to control where it was going. It seemed one was about to collide with the station. If they had more time, he and Ohno would be responsible for clearing the deck, rounding everyone up in the locker rooms.

But there was no time. 

Even over the klaxon, Nino could hear Okada screaming from the opposite end of the flight deck. “Safe zones, now!”

“Safe zones, now!” Nino repeated, shouting it for anyone in the vicinity to hear in case they couldn’t hear Okada.

And then he and Ohno started to run, their nearest safe zone being the control box next to the launch tube Nino had just inspected. From a control box, a launch supervisor from the deck crew would open the tube’s airlock and activate the magnetic accelerator that propelled a Kit out of the tube. Nino had been inside just yesterday, watching Jun offer his usual thumbs up before he was launched out for patrol.

The control box would have to serve as their safe zone now. Ohno pulled open the door, and Nino followed him inside, shutting it. They both got down on their hands and knees beside the wall, away from the thick, airtight glass window separating the box from the launch tube, keeping their hands over their heads.

They heard Aiba speak again, his voice barely able to drown out the klaxon. “Deadstick collision with the station imminent. Shields are up. All hands brace for impact in five seconds.”

In his head, Nino counted down. He got to three before he remembered that Sho was already aboard Neptune One, visiting his friend. Half the fucking crew was on Neptune One right now.

They heard the collision before they felt anything. A loud boom that seemed far off in the distance. The impact had been on the opposite side of the station from where the Suzaku was docked. The shockwave of the impact hit the Suzaku a few seconds later. With the distance, with the Suzaku’s shields up and the shielding capabilities of Neptune One itself, there wasn’t much more than a rumble, him and Ohno merely knocking against each other momentarily.

They stayed there, eyes to the floor, and Nino desperately tried not to panic. Sho was on Neptune One. Sho was on Neptune One. Where had it hit? 

The next voice they heard half a minute later wasn’t Aiba’s, but Captain Inohara’s.

“This is the captain. Although the threat has passed, we will maintain Condition Two until further notice. Shields are holding, and there will be no egress from the Suzaku. We are on emergency lockdown. Unless you or a crewmate with you requires immediate medical attention, all hands await further instructions.”

He was on his feet first, holding out a hand for Ohno. “Are you okay?” he asked, helping him to his feet.

Ohno nodded, just as shaken. Most of the flight deck crew was probably on Neptune One at that moment. And the captain had just ordered them to stay where they were. The Suzaku was locked down. 

They couldn’t help any of their friends.

Nino’s heart was racing, his hand shaking when he pulled open the control box door. He and Ohno found Okada standing in the center of the flight deck, half a dozen members of the crew already gathered around him.

“Ninomiya, safe zone double check. Get them to the locker rooms, and I want a count,” Okada said without a second’s hesitation. “Ohno, you take starboard and I’m taking port. Visuals on all of our ships. Now.”

There was no time to argue. While Ohno and Okada went to ensure that none of the Noris or Kits had shifted or been damaged from the shockwave, Nino had been charged with accounting for the crew that remained. He walked swiftly, calling up and down the flight tubes, checking every control box. 

“Report to your locker room,” he called out, waving any crew he found in that direction. Once he cleared the Kit area, he moved along the Nori berths, shouting as necessary. “Report to your locker room!”

Within twenty minutes he was checking each locker room and the pilots’ ready rooms doing headcounts. There were usually more than a hundred crew members on the deck each shift, but with the docking at the station, there’d only been a small crew of twenty-three during today’s first shift, along with one Kit pilot and three Nori pilots on emergency standby in the ready room. With Ohno and Okada still out on the deck, everyone was accounted for. And thankfully there were no injuries.

He ordered everyone to stay put and emerged from the last locker room, only staying calm because he had a job to do. He stood guard outside the locker rooms, keeping an eye on the deck while he watched Ohno and Okada far in the distance doing their inspections. Finally the two of them returned, and Nino informed the chief that all crew currently on duty were safe.

“All our ships stayed put,” Okada informed him. “Once we have the all clear from upstairs, I want a more thorough inspection. Every Nori, every Kit. Top to bottom. Second shift, I’ve only got fifteen today with the shore leave, so I need you two to stay on and help.”

“Understood, sir,” Ohno said without complaint, even though a top to bottom inspection would take hours. As senior members of the deck crew, they were the best at overseeing those inspections.

“Ninomiya,” Okada said sharply. “There a problem?”

Sho was on Neptune One. Sho was supposed to be waiting for him. 1800 hours, a reservation for two at the Star of the Sea King. Deck 3…where was deck 3 on Neptune One? Where was it?

“No, sir. Understood,” Nino said quickly, hoping Okada couldn’t see the way his hands were trembling.

—

It had been a friendly shuttlecraft from the Iberian Alliance, halfway to its destination at Alhambra Station, Neptune One’s closest neighbor in orbit around the planet. After suffering a catastrophic system failure, the shuttle had crashed into a habitat deck on the other side of the station.

Neptune One was strongly shielded, but the shuttle had been coming in fast. The decision had come down to one of the Neptune One Kits destroying it or letting it crash into the station. The habitat deck had been undergoing refurbishment, a new group of luxury units being built. The construction crew had been evacuated in time. Unfortunately for the fourteen souls aboard the shuttlecraft, they could not be.

Already ships from Alhambra had flown over, were in talks with Neptune One’s leadership about the incident. It would be weeks before things got back to normal - there’d be cleanup costs, a lengthy investigation from the Iberian Alliance about what had happened to the shuttle.

Neptune One had been able to lock down that section of the habitat deck after the station’s hull was breached, but there’d been a fire, incidents of smoke inhalation on the decks above and below the breach. The shockwave from the explosion had caused another round of injuries throughout the station, and the only people who’d been allowed to leave the Suzaku thus far had been Yonekura-sensei, Koike-sensei, and a medical team that Captain Inohara had sent to offer assistance to Neptune One’s team, and also to determine if any members of Suzaku’s crew had been hurt. Answers were unlikely to trickle down to the flight deck until after the all clear had been given.

It was nearly 2200 hours, and Nino had been stuck on the flight deck since that morning, inspecting Noris when all he wanted to do was know if Sho was safe. If anyone he knew had been hurt. He’d been able to take a short break, to press his hand to the computer panel outside the locker room and ask for Sakurai Sho’s current location. With the lockdown and with security at its highest alert aboard the station, all the computer could tell Nino was that “Lieutenant Sakurai Sho is aboard Neptune One.” It couldn’t tell him where, and it couldn’t tell him if Sho was safe.

With the limited crew, Okada had split him and Ohno up, giving them solo inspection duties while grouping the lower-ranked crew together. Nino had only had his own company for more than six hours, save for the occasional wave and concerned look across the deck to Ohno where he was working. 

Nino was close to screaming. He was close to insubordination. He ached all the way to his bones from crawling around inside and under several Noris. From the hours he’d spent earlier that day inspecting launch tubes from one end to the other. His nerves were fraying, his head ached, and he was surprised he’d gotten this far without having a full-blown panic attack. Only his work, his checklists, kept him sane.

It was 22:18 when the ship-wide address system turned on again. It wasn’t Aiba any longer, but one of the ensigns on his tactical team. It had been a rough day for Aiba Masaki, and Nino didn’t envy him. But the shields had held, and he’d stayed calm under pressure, even though Nino knew that Aiba had to be freaking out about Sho just as much as he was.

“This is the bridge. Neptune One has dropped their security alert to Moderate, and Captain Inohara has canceled the Suzaku’s emergency lockdown. An announcement from Sickbay will be going out shortly regarding the situation. We ask that if you do decide to leave the Suzaku and board Neptune One that you exercise caution, and obey any commands given to you by Neptune One personnel. A curfew is now in place. The Suzaku will lock down at midnight, if you wish to come back aboard tonight. Thank you for your continued cooperation.”

Nino had three points left on his checklist for Nori 22, taking a deep breath and clearing them with as close to his full attention as he could muster. He closed the aft hatch and started to walk.

There were two more to do, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. With his tablet out, he walked straight to where Chief Okada was standing, overseeing the final checks on the Kitsunes.

“I can’t do 23 and 24 tonight,” he said, looking his superior straight in the eye.

Okada looked as exhausted as Nino felt. “Why?”

“I…someone I care about is on Neptune One.”

“Someone _I_ care about is on Neptune One, too,” Okada told him plainly, raising an eyebrow. Nino felt selfish in that moment. Okada and Sho had been friends for years, just like Aiba and Sho were. And of course Okada had to be worried about the rest of the deck crew.

“I’m sorry,” Nino continued on anyway. “If I continue the inspections, I might miss something. Permission to finish the inspections during first shift tomorrow, sir? First thing?”

To Nino’s surprise, Okada took the tablet from his hand, then moved forward to put his arms around him, embracing him tightly. Nino shut his eyes, desperate to not break down. “You’ve worked hard today, Ninomiya. I’ll have third shift cover 23 and 24.”

He stepped back as Okada released him, feeling slightly ashamed of his weakness. “Thank you, sir. I’m very sorry, sir…I just…”

“When you find Sho-kun, send me a message.” Okada blinked, clearly concealing tears. “Just…just let me know when you find him. Please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nino barely realized what he was doing, heading for the locker room, shoving his tool belt into his locker. He didn’t change, he didn’t wash up. He got in the lift and furiously tapped the button for deck 2, heading for the airlock there that connected the Suzaku to the space station.

There was already a queue of people heading out, another batch filing in. Nino saw Yamada coming back on board the Suzaku, and he tugged on his sleeve as he went by.

“Yama-chan, Yama-chan, you’re alright?”

Yamada’s eyes widened at the sight of him, leaning forward to hug him. Nino stepped out of the queue, holding on tight. “I’m fine, I wasn’t anywhere close,” Yamada said. 

“Do you know? Do you know how many of our crew have been…”

“Nobody died,” Yamada said quickly. “Everyone’s going to be okay, that’s what I heard from Koike-sensei.”

“Injuries…has anyone been brought back to Sickbay?”

“Yeah, yeah they were allowed to be brought here hours ago. I think there were a few sprains, a few people fell during the shockwave. Nothing serious as far as I understand it.”

“Thanks,” Nino said, squeezing his arm before letting him go. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Thanks Ninomiya-san, stay safe.”

Nino watched the queue heading for the station, walking away to instead press his hand to the computer panel again. He shut his eyes.

“Good evening, Petty Officer First Class, Crewman Specialist Ninomiya Kazunari.”

“Please locate Lieutenant Sakurai Sho.”

“Lieutenant Sakurai Sho is aboard Neptune One.”

“Computer, can you clarify? Where on Neptune One?”

“Lieutenant Sakurai Sho is aboard Neptune One…” Before Nino could scream in frustration, the computer added some information. “…deck three.”

Nino hurried back into the queue, and a member of the security team was scanning their dog tags as they left to account for who was on and off ship. Once scanned, he hurried through the airlock, barely able to keep from breaking into a run.

He’d been aboard the space station before. It was usually a noisy place, with casinos and bars and packed restaurants and JSA crew stumbling around in their off-duty clothes, laughing on their shore leave.

Nino boarded a nearly empty internal shuttle, zipping from the outside docking ring to the main station hub in the center. It seemed like there was a curfew aboard the station as well, mostly security staff with stun pistols lining the corridors and only a few scattered people both civilian and not walking around. The usual station lights were bright, there were the smells from the marketplaces and restaurants, but the place was emptied out.

He found a station guide panel along one wall, finding that the internal shuttle had brought him to deck 6. He hurried to the bank of lifts that moved up and down the central tower of the station. He was the only one inside when the doors shut and he pressed the button for deck 3. The lift walls were glass, allowing guests to look out across the station levels. As the lift rose, Nino could only see people milling around quietly, shell-shocked. Fourteen people had died that day. They weren’t JSA, but they had been innocents. Neptune One was not going to be the same for a while.

The doors whooshed open at deck 3, and he nearly tripped as he hurried out, eyes scanning ahead for what he knew his destination was. It was easy enough to find it, since instead of solid walls it was surrounded by enormous fish tanks.

He wasn’t surprised when he got to the closed Star of the Sea King restaurant, finding Sho sitting outside on a bench in front of a tank of oblivious fish, a rainbow’s worth of colors carrying on with their swimming as though nothing was amiss. Aiba was sitting with him, the two of them sitting close and talking quietly.

It was Aiba who noticed him first, looking up and smiling even though his eyes were tired and red, his uniform jacket still buttoned up as though he’d come running as soon as he’d been able to leave the Suzaku. Sho looked up next. He was in his off-duty clothes, the blue khaki jacket unbuttoned, his dog tag on its silver chain lying against his gray shirt.

Sho smiled at him weakly. He looked tired but otherwise unharmed. “They canceled my reservation.”

“Because you take advantage of the all you can eat crab legs, you glutton. I’d shut my restaurant down if I saw you coming, too,” Aiba teased, rubbing Sho’s arm and getting to his feet.

“You don’t…you don’t have to go,” Nino said quietly, but Aiba shook his head.

“It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow,” Aiba said, and it was probably the truth. Decisions had to be made - if the Suzaku was going to stay, if they were going to head for a different station to refuel and restock. Senior officers would have to be present for it.

“Can you tell Chief Okada that Sho-san is okay?” Nino asked, and Aiba nodded.

“Sure, I’m happy to.”

And then Aiba was leaving, Aiba was gone. Sho was still sitting on the bench, the glow of the massive fish tank behind him. A few other Suzaku crew members headed for the lifts, walking around Nino and chatting quietly with each other.

Sho patted the bench where Aiba had been sitting, and Nino stepped forward, his whole body tense. He sat down, unable to look at Sho beside him, staring straight ahead and simply trying to breathe. When Sho reached over, taking hold of his hand and squeezing, Nino broke down, not much caring that he was still in a public-enough place. Hearing him crying quietly, Sho squeezed his hand harder.

They sat like that for several minutes, Nino crying and the fish swimming, Sho holding his hand with quiet, steady strength.

Sho spoke first. “I was with my friend, he was giving me a tour of where he works in engineering here. My academy friend, I mean, Tsubasa-kun.”

“He’s okay?”

“Yeah, we were both fine. When the station went into high alert, we got locked down there. There isn’t anything much more boring than staring at a bank of generators for four hours.”

Nino sniffed, wiping his eyes with his free hand. “I’m sure your brother, the engineering nerd, would disagree with you.”

Sho laughed quietly. “I’m sure he would.”

“I was stuck on the flight deck until about twenty minutes ago when they said we could come over here. I was doing inspections.”

“Thank you for your hard work today.”

Nino chuckled, shaking his head. “I had every intention of making that reservation, too. All you can eat…well, I’m not really an all you can eat sort of guy, but if you were gonna pay for it…”

“That had been the plan, yeah.”

“Then I would have worked very hard.” He let out a breath. “Did you get to eat? I ate a few protein bars from the cafeteria just off the deck. No comparison with fresh shrimp, you know.”

“Aiba-kun brought me some chicken from the cafeteria.” Sho pointed across the floor to a garbage bin. “The evidence is in there.”

“Suzaku curfew is midnight,” Nino said.

“I heard.”

“What about over here?”

“Midnight. Same thing.” Sho released his hand, leaning forward and resting his arms on his thighs. “Can I be honest with you a second?”

“Sure.”

“If you met me for dinner, I’m sure this would have come out more naturally over the course of it. If things had gone smoothly, that is…”

He waited for Sho to speak, hearing a little bit of embarrassment in his voice.

“There’s a hotel here on the station. It’s called the Blue View. The name is dumb, but the rooms are all planet-facing. I reserved one for the night.”

Nino swallowed, taking that in. He opted for his default response, a flippant comment. “Figured that with all you were planning to eat tonight that you wouldn’t make it back to the ship, huh?”

Sho jostled his shoulder roughly, and Nino grinned, blushing red.

“Now don’t feel obligated to come with me just because of what happened today…”

“What happened to taking it slow?” He took a breath. “What happened to senior officers needing to disclose their relationships?”

“Four hours staring at generators while a space station is on lockdown makes you think a bit harder about what’s really important. And what’s important is you, whatever I have to do to keep you in my life.”

He smiled, looking at his feet. “You’re really okay with that?”

“I just want you, Nino. If you’ll have a stubborn guy like me.”

“I’m stubborn, too,” Nino admitted. “I think that’s why we work.”

Sho got to his feet, a decisive motion.

“Let’s go prove you right.”

—

Neptune was a beautiful planet. The methane in its atmosphere absorbed red light from the sun, but reflected blue light back into space, giving the planet its signature color.

But Nino barely looked out the window, kicking off his boots and stripping immediately out of his still grimy jumpsuit and the rest of his clothes to get in the shower. Sho would clean up next, once he got back from the pharmacy a few doors down from the Blue View hotel.

He didn’t bother with a bathrobe, emerging from the bathroom naked and unashamed to find Sho still fully clothed, sitting in a chair and facing him.

Sho smiled, rolling his eyes. “I wanted to unzip your jumpsuit.”

“Well, I’m very sorry, Sho-san, but maybe next time.” He leaned against the doorframe. “I could undress you?”

“I guess you can help with that,” Sho said, getting to his feet and walking over. 

There was power, almost possessiveness in the way Sho put a hand to the back of his neck, pulled him close. It was the sweetest reunion, feeling Sho’s mouth against his own again. Nino returned Sho’s kiss with equal fervor, trying to convey the depth of what this meant to him. He’d missed him, and if circumstances that day had been worse, he might have never been able to kiss him again. He didn’t care what he had to do. They’d argue, they’d compromise. They’d figure it out. The two of them together. Whatever happened further down the road, for now Sakurai Sho was who he wanted. Sakurai Sho was who he needed.

Sho’s hands were roaming all over his still-damp skin, fingers grazing and tickling along his back, along his sides. Nino got to work, fingers tugging at Sho’s jacket, pushing it off his shoulders to the hotel room floor. His arms were bared, the muscles Nino had sorely missed. He grabbed the silver chain around Sho’s neck, pulling him back for another kiss. He ran his hands up Sho’s arms, shivering a little when he squeezed Sho’s bicep and got a moan in response.

They stumbled backward into the bathroom Nino had just left, Sho whining when his socks got wet on the floor. Nino just laughed at him, moving his hands deftly to Sho’s middle, unbuttoning his pants and tugging the zipper down. With a bit of effort, they got Sho’s shirt and pants off, tugging off his now-damp socks.

He palmed Sho’s cock through his underwear, earning another moan. “This will be much better once we’re both naked. Now wash up, I won’t distract you.”

He left Sho to shower, heading back for the room. He found the pharmacy bag on the nightstand, pulling out the box of condoms and lubricant Sho had bought. Nino hadn’t expected Sho to be so bold, having assumed they’d just touch, that maybe Sho would let him suck him off. Then again, Sho was the ambitious type, wasn’t he?

While Sho showered, he tugged the sheets and blankets, settling them at the foot of the bed, giving them fewer obstacles to get in the way. By the time Sho returned, a towel around his waist, Nino was lying back, stroking his cock in anticipation.

Sho grinned at the sight of him, spying the bottle of lubricant already uncapped on the nightstand. “So I don’t even have to ask?”

“Oh, you still have to ask,” Nino said, eyes lingering at Sho’s abdomen, the dark trail of hair disappearing into that towel. “I definitely want to hear you ask.”

Sho approached the bed, dropping his towel. Nino liked what they both had to work with. Sho got onto the bed, the mattress dipping a little with his added weight. Nino stopped touching himself, letting Sho move over to him, spreading his legs to let Sho lie between them. When Sho’s hardening cock brushed against his own, he bit his lip, wondering how long either of them was going to last.

Sho pressed his lean, hard body all along his, Nino discovering just how well they fit together. Once Sho had braced himself on his elbows, Nino kissed him, swallowing Sho’s satisfied groan eagerly. It was so easy, lying there with Sho so close, inhaling the scent of soap, feeling Sho’s cock brush against his thigh.

Things grew heated fairly quickly, Sho adjusting a little, kissing his way down Nino’s chin, along his throat. Sho’s teeth nibbled his collarbone before his tongue dipped lower, circling around his nipple. He groaned, shutting his eyes, wanting more and more with each passing second. Sho alternated between licking and sucking, his lips proving themselves to be treacherous, dangerous. Nino slowly lost control, arching his hips up, pushing his hard, desperate cock up in search of whatever friction he could find.

After a few minutes of such teasing, Sho’s mouth was back closer, pressing hot, breathy kisses along his neck. “My god, when are you going to ask?” Nino complained.

He adored the arrogant laugh he received in return. “In a minute.”

Nino retaliated as best he could, dragging his fingertips up and down Sho’s sides, feeling him fidget as it tickled him.

“Alright, alright, fine,” Sho muttered, leaning back a little to look into his face. “If you stop tickling me, can I fuck you?”

Nino smiled despite himself. “So long as you don’t have to disclose that to your superiors.”

Sho moved off of him, laughing as he moved to the nightstand and the lubricant bottle. “No, they only need to know _who_ I’m fucking. Not how I’m doing it.”

Sho was gentle and patient, as Nino had anticipated he would be, pressing soft kisses to Nino’s knee while he slowly slipped his finger in and out of him, giving Nino time to adjust to the feeling, one he hadn’t experienced in quite a while. He lay back, licking his lips and slowly getting accustomed to the feeling of one of Sho’s fingers, then two.

As Sho worked, Nino stroked himself, running his fingers along his own chest, his abdomen, the places where Sho’s mouth had been only minutes earlier, so hot and needy. Soon, he was pushing back, bucking his hips, taking Sho’s fingers deeper inside, wanting and wanting and wanting. “Please. Please, Sho.”

At the desperate sound of his name and only his name falling from Nino’s lips, Sho didn’t hesitate. Nino watched, half dazed, as Sho tore open the condom wrapper, rolled it onto his erection. He spread his legs apart wider, letting Sho position himself. It felt different, but the best kind of different when he felt the head of Sho’s cock first prod against him.

He nodded his readiness, his eagerness, groaning in relief when Sho started to move. He tilted his head back, fingers tightening in the sheets as Sho pushed inside him, slipped back, and pushed forward again. Once Sho had found a gentle, easy rhythm, Sho leaned forward, resting his forearms on the mattress to either side of Nino’s head. As Sho moved against him, he pressed lazy kisses against Nino’s neck, breathing hard.

Nino brought his hands up, holding onto Sho’s arms, needing to touch him. He’d probably be feeling it in the morning, in his thighs, his hips, especially after his exhausting day on the flight deck. But those thoughts fell away easily, Sho’s lips drifting from his neck to his mouth, Nino moaning when Sho started to move faster, filling him again and again with barely-contained desperation.

Things grew less polite before long, with Sho somehow finding the courage to start murmuring “Kazu” against his skin, his voice rough and deep, another “Kazu” teasing along his ear.

He gave in, wrapping his legs around Sho, moving with him, trying as best he could to time each upward movement of his hips with every quickening push of Sho’s cock inside him. Sho had given up on using his name by now, only releasing the most primal sounds of need, his breaths coming in hard gasps. “Sho, I need to get off,” Nino demanded, and Sho obeyed, shifting a little so Nino could get his hand between their bodies.

He bit his lip, groaning once he got a hand around himself, jerking sloppily. “Fuck me, fuck me,” he whispered again and again, stroking his cock as Sho did as he was told. He felt the wave of his own pleasure approaching, racing right up to the edge. He cried out, working through it. Sho didn’t stop, even when Nino clumsily came, his hot release hitting both of them. He kept his hand between them, in a haze of satisfaction as Sho edged closer himself.

Sho was a little quieter about it, exhaling an almost shocked “oh, Nino” before he shuddered a bit, his hips pushing against Nino with one final surge before he slowed, raining giddy little kisses across Nino’s cheeks and chin before resting his face in the hollow between Nino’s neck and collarbone. 

He could definitely get used to this.

—

It was early morning when Nino woke, his body stubborn and complaining as he opened his eyes. Sho was standing by the window, a cup of instant hotel coffee in his hand as he looked at Neptune in the distance. He’d only pulled on his underwear, the fabric clinging perfectly to his ass. He could get used to waking up and seeing that.

“Morning.”

Sho took a sip, looking over. “Morning.”

Nino stirred, hearing his joints crack as he tossed the bedsheets off, getting up to use the toilet. He felt sixty-three, not thirty-three, but he couldn’t complain. When he returned, Sho hadn’t moved. It really was an amazing view, at least now he was getting his money’s worth.

Nino came up behind him, wrapping his arms around Sho’s middle. He heard Sho sigh in contentment when Nino pressed a kiss to his shoulder blade before turning his head, resting his cheek against Sho’s warm skin.

“What time do we have to go?”

“First shift starts in an hour.”

He tightened his grip on Sho, patting his abdomen greedily. “Don’t wanna.”

“Me neither,” Sho chuckled.

Nino moved a little, looking around Sho to the planet beyond. Most of his time in space, it was kind of easy to forget he was even there. He spent his hours on the flight deck, deep in the guts of a Nori. He spent his free time in his quarters, rarely looking out. And yet he was traveling thousands and thousands of miles every single day, distances that people who never left Earth couldn’t even fathom.

And in all of space, across all the distant worlds and colonies that JSA had settled, the entire universe, circumstance had placed him aboard the Suzaku and circumstance had brought Sakurai Sho into his life. Nino liked to tell himself he wasn’t the sentimental type, but he had to admit that he was lucky.

“With all the activity happening here on the station, it may be a few days until I can meet with the XO. He’s the one I have to report to, about…making any disclosures,” Sho said a few minutes later.

“A few days, huh?”

“Yeah, so if you don’t mind, Crewman Specialist, let’s keep this off the record until further notice.”

“Oh, that’s no problem, sir.”

Sho moved, going to set his coffee cup on the nightstand. When he returned, he gave Nino a surprise, lifting him up.

“Hey!”

He deposited Nino on the bed with little grace, joining him there. He ignored Sho’s coffee breath, receiving a long, hot kiss. “Off the record,” Sho said, grinning.

“Understood, sir.”

Nino gasped when Sho’s mouth started to explore, heading in a southerly direction that Nino quite liked. When Sho’s tongue was circling his navel, he paused only to say it again.

“That’s off the record too.”

“Understood, sir. Loud and clear, sir.”

Knowing Sho, he’d never be late for duty, so Nino looked forward to seeing how skilled Sho was in a time crunch. With one more teasing “off the record,” Sho’s mouth closed around his cock, a wake up call he wouldn’t soon forget.

—

The last of the passengers from the Saturn stations had boarded during Nino’s shift, and the Suzaku was now on its way to Mars. In the morning the ship would jump, bypassing Jupiter airspace and the asteroid belt.

The lifts were crowded as Nino left the flight deck behind, riding up with a few families who were in the middle of a “Battle Stations” tour, a new pilot program that Lieutenant Commander Matsushima had started as part of her civilian welfare initiatives. It meant more civilians wandering areas that had been off-limits, but in satisfying their curiosity about how the Suzaku worked, they might be less liable to sneak around later.

Either way, Nino was happy with any civilian welfare initiative that didn’t involve toting around a sack of rice.

A little boy tugged on Nino’s jumpsuit, looking up at him. “Hey, what do you do?”

The crewman who was leading the tour smiled warmly. “He’s just come from our flight deck. You arrived there, if you remember, Shota-kun.”

Shota-kun?! Nino stifled a laugh. What were the odds?

“All the shuttles are there!” the boy said, looking up at Nino. “Do you fly them?”

“Nope,” Nino said, “I fix them.”

“Is it fun?”

The lift doors opened, and Nino headed out, turning around to point at Shota-kun and offer what he hoped was his coolest expression. “It’s the most fun you can have, and don’t let anyone tell you different!”

The lift closed behind him, and he chuckled, wondering if he could get a special payout from the JSA Mechanic School on Mars if he started recruiting them young.

Sho was waiting for him when he approached, leaning against the wall beside the entrance to the astrometrics lab. Sho authorized Nino’s access to the lab, the doors opening to let them inside. Nino walked around the room, seeing the readouts from Mercutio, Tybalt, Capulet, and Sho’s other literary friends. 

Sho started the simulator program, ready to run the various calculations that his team had come up with, more than two dozen alternative jumps for him to double check before the Suzaku’s jump come morning. Nino let Sho crunch his numbers for a while, listening to the noise from the computer.

In each telescope’s data screen, the view was a little dull. Nothing but distant stars, light that had left those systems years earlier, only reaching them now. Benvolio, at least, was pointed to Mars, giving Nino something familiar to look at. He watched the screen for a while, still a bit afraid to touch anything in the lab.

Eventually Sho looked up after running a few scenarios. “I could show you sometime, how we change what they’re looking at.”

Nino grinned, shrugging his shoulders. “Sounds boring.”

“And it’ll only get more boring from here,” Sho teased him, pressing a button on the panel to run another simulation. “When I have my own ship someday, I won’t even get to play around in here.”

“You’ll be unbearable then. You’ll be giving orders all day. You’ll turn into a real pain in the ass.”

Sho paused the simulation, beckoning Nino over to him with a “get over here” gesture. Here was an order Nino had no trouble obeying.

He came around, pressing himself against Sho. “Then again, Lieutenant, I’ve always liked that pain in the ass side of you.” 

“Feeling’s mutual,” Sho said, looking down at him with a quirk to his lips.

When their lips met, it felt just as right as it had the very first time. Sho wrapped an arm around his back, pulling him closer.

Space was vast, dark, and still largely unknowable. The Japan Space Authority had scattered itself across the solar system, in colonies further out. Compared to the galaxy, the larger universe, JSA’s ships and colonies were nothing but individual grains of sand on the shoreline of a vast ocean.

And yet in that individual grain of sand that was JSA-409, the Suzaku, Nino had found someone who’d made him think twice, to reconsider what he wanted from his life. It was early days, when everything was still new and exciting, but with every passing moment, he had a suspicion that that new and exciting feeling wasn’t going to disappear any time soon. He was ready for the challenges ahead, eager to face them with Sho’s hand in his own.

For now, Nino stopped thinking about the future and focused on the here and now, the warmth of Sho before him, the way Sho’s kisses left him aching for another and another. He eventually gathered the strength to release him, giving Sho a pat on the ass before stepping back, satisfied.

“Run your simulations, Lieutenant.”

“Is that an order? You’re giving _me_ an order?” Sho rasped, looking at him like nothing else out here among the stars mattered.

Nino only smiled.


End file.
